It's Good to see Someone's Making Money in the UK

Generali

Even if it's your money they're earning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8598008.stm

The number of council employees in the UK earning six-figure salaries rose by 14% last year to 1,250, according to figures obtained by a campaign group.

Thirty-one officials earned more than the prime minister and 219 more than cabinet ministers, said the Taxpayers' Alliance, which calls for lower taxes....



Bob Neill, shadow local government minister, said: "Town hall clerks have morphed into highly-paid chief executives moving from council to council like football managers.

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/thrl2010.pdf

The MD of Environment and Regeneration in Kent earned £170,000 more than Gordon Brown in 2008-9!

Kilty_2

Yet they're cutting the staff at the very bottom .

I work for a council (though I'm an agency worker) and they're cutting cleaning staff's hours at the moment.

Generali

Kilty wrote: »

Yet they're cutting the staff at the very bottom .

I work for a council (though I'm an agency worker) and they're cutting cleaning staff's hours at the moment.

Perfect. Cutting actual output whilst increasing the cost of the bureacracy.

amcluesent

Yep, there's 221 [STRIKE]staff[/STRIKE]jobsworth numpties on more than £50,000 in Peterborough Council - BTW, that's where they have illegals living in benders on the roadabouts and EE's bedding down in people's sheds. And the Council says nothing can be done!

torontoboy45

Generali wrote: »

Even if it's your money they're earning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8598008.stm

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/thrl2010.pdf

The MD of Environment and Regeneration in Kent earned £170,000 more than Gordon Brown in 2008-9!

I wonder how much weight the argument 'if we don't pay salaries commensurate with the private sector we won't attract the right calibre' holds.

any?

plenty of people in the private sector earning more than the pm, but - as we discussed on another thread - the real moolah lies ready and waiting for ex-pm's on the lecture circuit and in book deals; moolah desperately needed to bolster the spiffingly marvellous pension.

DaddyBear

Generali wrote: »

Perfect. Cutting actual output whilst increasing the cost of the bureacracy.

That would be a great tag line for the tories' election campaign:

Labour: cutting output and increasing cost.

amcluesent

>any?<

None. It's cronyism that gets you ahead in the councils, unless you're Common Purpose 'trained' then no chance.

Procrastinator333

Below is a link to the peterborough council statement of accounts. Turnover £150m, i haven't trawled through, but i would expect it tells you staff numbers somewhere, my guess is 500-1000. Plus there will be a lot of management of outsourced services.

http://www.peterborough.gov.uk/PDF/SOA%2008-09%20%20Final%202%201.pdf

Councils are pretty complex organisations. Much more than most private companies of a comparable size.

Go to companies house and have a look at the accounts of some comparable sized companies there. The directors will be gettting 2-3 times what people in the public sector get as it is.

If you think an organisation like that could be run without paying wages higher than £50k you are in cloud cukkoo land.

In truth I don't think they pay enough. There is also little linkage between performance and reward (afaik)- hence no incentive to save on the budget. If they reduce costs by 10%, what happens, the budget just gets cut next year. Great.

A bit off the cuff this, but I think there should be some very large bonuses available to budget holders in the public sector. Take a council. Why not pay a bonus based on 2 factors. 1) Satisfaction survey by residents and 2) % of budget not spent. If all staff in the council received a bonus based on those 2 criteria I reckon there would be a lot of money to be found. Take that Peterborough budget for example. Say you do a satisfaction survey to benchmark and it comes up with 52% satisfied. You set a target that if in 12 months you have 55% satisfaction and have saved 3% of the bugdet (£4.5m), then £3m will be paid to staff as a bonus. If there were 500 staff that would be an average of £6k each.

What is the point in saving to then pay it as a bonus I hear? Because then next year the target is for aother 3% on both numbers. The prior year saving is just kept by the taxpayer. Do that for 5 years, miss a couple of times, but you probably have a 10% budget saving.

I'm sure any such plan would need to be a little more complex than this, but it serves as an example.

Anyway, I'm of out shortly, so flame me now. :j

Generali

torontoboy45 wrote: »

I wonder how much weight the argument 'if we don't pay salaries commensurate with the private sector we won't attract the right calibre' holds.

any?

I guess the question to ask is, Since salaries for senior management have risen hugely* has the provision of services become more efficient, ie does more get produced with less?







*I think this started in the early-mid 1990s

drc

I'm guessing this is why council taxes have doubled under Labour? To pay lavish salaries and pensions to those at the top. How very socialist of them.

Generali

Procrastinator333 wrote: »

Below is a link to the peterborough council statement of accounts. Turnover £150m, i haven't trawled through, but i would expect it tells you staff numbers somewhere, my guess is 500-1000. Plus there will be a lot of management of outsourced services.

http://www.peterborough.gov.uk/PDF/SOA%2008-09%20%20Final%202%201.pdf

Councils are pretty complex organisations. Much more than most private companies of a comparable size.

Go to companies house and have a look at the accounts of some comparable sized companies there. The directors will be gettting 2-3 times what people in the public sector get as it is.

If you think an organisation like that could be run without paying wages higher than £50k you are in cloud cukkoo land.

In truth I don't think they pay enough. There is also little linkage between performance and reward (afaik)- hence no incentive to save on the budget. If they reduce costs by 10%, what happens, the budget just gets cut next year. Great.

A bit off the cuff this, but I think there should be some very large bonuses available to budget holders in the public sector. Take a council. Why not pay a bonus based on 2 factors. 1) Satisfaction survey by residents and 2) % of budget not spent. If all staff in the council received a bonus based on those 2 criteria I reckon there would be a lot of money to be found. Take that Peterborough budget for example. Say you do a satisfaction survey to benchmark and it comes up with 52% satisfied. You set a target that if in 12 months you have 55% satisfaction and have saved 3% of the bugdet (£4.5m), then £3m will be paid to staff as a bonus. If there were 500 staff that would be an average of £6k each.

What is the point in saving to then pay it as a bonus I hear? Because then next year the target is for aother 3% on both numbers. The prior year saving is just kept by the taxpayer. Do that for 5 years, miss a couple of times, but you probably have a 10% budget saving.

I'm sure any such plan would need to be a little more complex than this, but it serves as an example.

Anyway, I'm of out shortly, so flame me now. :j

Councils are complex organisations I agree, but a key difference IMO between a company and a local council is that the Chief Exec have many fewer strategic decisions to make as many of those will be set by local and central Government politicians.

My belief is that running local Government as a bureaucrat is more akin to middle management in the private sector than being on the board of a company. As such I guess £40-80,000 would be adequate, depending on local wages and the size of the council.

I am a great believer in performance related pay. Public sector unions have fought against it tooth and nail AIUI.