Head gets £120k and council boss £220k as top earners revealed (From This Is Local London)

Head gets £120k and council boss £220k as top earners revealed

10:14am Wednesday 7th October 2009 in News By Oliver Evans

Buckinghamshire County Council's offices in Aylesbury

THE number of Schools staff on more than £50,000 rose by a quarter in one year – with one head getting about £120,000.

Newly released figures show a sharp increase in the number of top staff, thought to be heads, from 255 in 2007/08 to 332 to 2008/09.

And the number of managers at Buckinghamshire County Council, the local education authority, on more than £50,000 went up about a fifth, from 163 to 197.

The figures also reveal its chief executive, Chris Williams, got £210,000 to £219,999 last year.

This sum – set by the ruling Conservative council – appears to jar with a new Tory policy over pay, which comes amid a Government squeeze on senior salaries.

Any move to pay a public servant more than the Prime Minister, presently £197,689, will need the chancellor’s approval, shadow chancellor George Osborne said yesterday.

The authority refused to name the top earning head, who got £120,000 to £129,999, when asked by the Bucks Free Press. It would only provide salaries in bands.

Marc Wallace, spokesman for the TaxPayers’ Alliance pressure group, said: “These are very alarming jumps.

“When local taxpayers are facing redundancies and pay freezes in the private sector, it is unjustifiable for the council or local schools to be handing out more and more money.”

The council should name the top earners, he said, “particularly this extremely highly paid headteacher”.

Annette Pryce, Bucks secretary for the National Union of Teachers, said: “It is surprising to see the number of senior posts paid above the £50,000 mark has risen so substantially.”

Only the “very top” teachers would get about £45,000, she said, and said a lull in recruitment could have seen more top earners.

Teachers working in “difficult circumstances” deserved the cash, she said, but the news would “only serve to reopen the debate about elevated pay for senior staff”.

John Hakes, a spokesman for the National Association of Headteachers, said heads’ pay was too low given their responsibilities, including some who manage budgets of millions.

Their jobs were less safe because of public scrutiny and he said: “They are hard to recruit – there is an argument that salaries are not in line with the market at the moment.”

Councillor Frank Downes, responsible for finance on the county council, said schools pay was set by the Government and defended the council’s setting of pay for its own staff.

He said: “We hold our chief executive in high regard – you want good people. We manage a budget of £700m so it is a big job.”

And he said the council – which is struggling to fill a hole in its budget – provided a “high level of service” which it is “trying hard to maintain in very difficult circumstances”.

Mr Williams’ previous 2007/08 salary was £190,000 to £199,999. There was outrage when it was revealed in April that this was a 44 per cent increase on the previous year (see link, bottom of story).

The Government’s Department for Children, Schools and Families had yet to comment at the time of going to press.

Last week senior NHS pay was revealed (see links, below). The boss of an authority named the worst in England for its management got £155,000 to £160,000.