Somebody gave me a wee nudgette about the 2008/9 Statement of Accounts now being up on the NCC website. I'm sure there's lots of buried treasure in there and once I've stocked up on 'will to live' pills I might have a proper rifle through and see what's what.
In the meantime however, can I suggest that you leaf through to page 56 where you will find a breakdown of senior staff salaries in bands.
As context let me remind you that councillors are currently considering a secret review of senior salaries and of course that they not long ago decided that several hundred redundancies were needed to help balance the books (sorry, "support vulnerable people").
So, what's in the box?
Well, the lowest band in the table is for posts with salaries of between £50,000 and £59,999 and we can see that the number of staff within this range has shot up by over 21% between 2007/8 and 2008/9 from 133 to 161. Bear in mind here that the highest nationally negotiated pay scale was £41,204 in 2008/9.
It gets worse (or better, depending on your point of view). The number of senior officers receiving between £80,000 and £89,999 has risen from 12 to 21 and those 'earning' between £140,000 to £149,999 has gone up from 3 to 5.
But here's the big one. In 2007/8 there was one officer in the £190,000 to £199,999 pay band but in 2008/9 this band was empty.
However, a new pay band has been added to the table for the single employee who received somewhere between £240,000 and £249,999 *pause for sharp intake of breath*...
I wonder who it can be? Initial suspicions naturally point to the Chief Executive, Jane Todd but it can't be her because when she was appointed in December 2008 she made a big song and dance about only accepting £165k pa instead of the advertised £185k. And it also appears that she was actually on secondment for most of the year concerned and that apparently isn't included.
Presume it must be Michael Frater's payoff, either that or it was Beryl the cleaner's lucky day...
Would they have to name names - or at least posts - if someone put in an FOI request?
ReplyDeleteStrangely enough, the one that I find most surprising is 161 people earning between £50,000 and £59,000
Although, on second thoughts, an almost 100% increase in those earning up to £90,000 is pretty spectacular...
And then again...
I suspect they would hide behind the Data Protection Act, and poss the Local Government Act 1972, if you asked for names. Also revealing certain posts would enable identification of individuals too so they would probably resist that.
ReplyDeleteThe Information Commissioner's guidance suggests that the higher up a post is within an organisation, the greater the public interest in revealing information about it which may outweigh the DPA. But it would prob go to an appeal if you asked.
I'm quite looking forward to next years accounts, that will show whether JoTo did go ahead with her promise not to take the full fat salary.