Hull City Council has recently advertised for a new chief executive. The outgoing chief executive earned over £200K last year. Thankfully, his replacement will be paid a salary of somewhere between £155-165K per annum. This represents - roughly - a 25% pay cut. In these strained economic times, this is welcome news; isn't it? It seems not everyone is happy, and I don't mean those who are queueing up to get the job.
Labour haven't quite worked out what to do in opposition. Labour councillors held the reigns of power for so long, they thought it was their god-given right. The voters think otherwise and we now have a Liberal Democrat run council. To their credit, the LibDems have tried to right many Labour wrongs and have brought down the costs of running local government; hence the reduction in the chief executive's pay. Labour councillor, Mary Glew, thinks taxpayers' money is there is be thrown around and this morning called for the acting chief executive to be paid the same wage as the outgoing one. If she had her way, council taxpayers would have to stump up thousands of pounds extra.
The one thing Labour is always good at is spending other peoples money. If Cllr Glew had to pay the acting chief executive out of her own pocket, I don't think she would have made her suggestion in the council chamber this morning. There again, if Labour was still in power, the salary would probably have been increased, rather than reduced and they would probably have made sure their allowances were increased too.
New Labour - same old fiscal irresponsibility.
4 comments:
This is Labour opposition for opposition's sake.
In 2007/2008 Hull paid its councillors and co-opted members almost £1million in allowances and expenses. Perhaps it is time that they too had their 'salary' cut in line with the chiel executive. Local government, like the MP fiasco, is running out of control. I represent a group calling for the reform of the council tax system. Compare the council tax in Hull to other parts of the country and you will see that the council tax is lower than the 'average' figure. Time not just council tax, but local government in its entirety was reformed into a leaner establishment. Then the council tax payer may get a fairer deal
www.isitfair.co.uk
christine.
In the last 4 years the council has put pay and conditions to councillors. scince i became leader the council have cut the number of special responsibility allowances ( i.e. extra pay!) by 17 posts in the last three years. The councillor wage bill is less now than it was in 2005! ( total expenses claims have also fallen too) The detail of these figures have been supplied to Andrew in his TPA role. We are about to make a push on councillor support costs this year - we believe we can save around 250k from this too.
Higher tax? My goodness!
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