Enfield
| TOP STORIES |  | | | | | | | FEATURES | | | | | | MAYOR NEWS | | | | TRAVEL | | | | COMPETITIONS | | |
|
|
|
Council stays quiet on fatcats’ earnings
ENFIELD Council has refused to reveal exactly how many thousands of pounds of public money it pays its top officials.
It refused to fully comply with a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) to reveal how many council staff are paid over £100,000.
That put Enfield in the 25 per cent of councils which failed to be specific about how much they pay their highest earners.
With a chief executive wagepacket of between £160,000 and £169,000, the top job in Enfield is above the London average of £158,028, according to figures obtained by campaign group the Taxpayers' Alliance for its annual Town Hall Rich List.
The figures also show that the number of people paid above £110,000 has jumped from two to five since 2005, while the number of people earning over £100,000 now stands at six.
The Taxpayers' Alliance, which aims to scrutinise how public money is spent, asked Enfield Council for a full breakdown of names, positions and full remuneration of senior council officers.
The Information Commiss-ioner (ICO) which promotes access to official information and investigates breaches of FOI guidelines, says information about personal finances can be withheld.
But it adds: "Information which is about someone acting in an official or work capacity should normally be provided on request unless there is some risk to the individual concerned."
The council refused to reveal the information on the grounds that it was personal information about a third party.
A spokeswoman said the council will "take note" of this "technical guidance" in any FOI request and added: "If a requestor for information is dissatisfied with any response from a Public Authority then this can be referred to the ICO for a review of the decision."
Alliance chief executive Matthew Elliott claimed too often high council executives were "rewarded handsomely even when they fail".
He said: "Families and pensioners are struggling with the demands of yet another council tax rise, and councils owe it to them to cut back on executive pay hikes."
Ben Farrugia, policy analyst at the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "The majority of councils were forthcoming. Those councils who weren't forthcoming tended to have something to hide."
8:20am Saturday 26th April 2008
Print 
Email this
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
