Our council factcats are having an expensive laugh – and we’re paying

Here are the latest salaries for the chief executives running bits of London:

Yup, there are a lot of them and they seem to be rather well-paid for their “public service”.

I’ve managed to find an amazing 408 chief executives in�local authorities�across the UK all earning similar amounts to this bunch (though there are probably a few more that I didn’t pick up on as I almost gave up in despair at this profligacy with our money).

Moreover, there are over 2,300 people in local government earning more than �100,000 a year. They cost us over �320,000,000 a year in salaries – an average salary of �139,000. As most will retire on inflation-protected pensions of about �100,000 a year (a pension pot of around �3,000,000), their pensions will cost us about �7bn.

These well-paid worthies include such non-jobs as: Bracknell Forest’s Director of Environment, Culture and Communities – �135,300 (culture in Bracknell Forest?): Bradford’s Strategic Director of Culture, Tourism and Sport – �140,000 (tourism in Bradford?): Enfield’s Director of Environment and Streetscene – �144,000 and in Thurrock (wherever that is) there’s a Director of Community Wellbeing (�145,000) and also a Director of Sustainable Communities (�142,000). (These are 2010 salaries, so they’ve probably gone up a bit since then)

Moreover, since New Labour were elected in 1997, the number of people working for councils earning over �50,000 a year went up by a factor of more than 12 times from 3,300 to�over 40,000. Yet in the private sector, the number earning over �50,000 went up by only a factor of 3 times.

So, please don’t let anyone ever tell you�that our council taxes need to go up to keep on providing services. Our councils have loads of money (our money). Unfortunately, they choose to spend it on inflated salaries and pensions for their staff rather than on services.

We are getting shafted by our overpaid, overpensioned council factcats and there’s nothing we can do about it.