Surprised this hasn't been addressed yet:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12009099/Council-bosses-earning-as-much-as-footballers.html
IMO the pay in the local council system is ridiculously high and could easily be reduced.
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His argument falls down as soon as he starts comparing the PM's pay to others in the public sector. He's either after his name in the paper or stupid. Probably the first but you never know.
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Welcome to my world. For the last five years the Labour administration here has talked of reducing by merging councils and services. The LAs came up with a plan - for example one authority merging with a neighbour would cost 5 million to merge, with huge projected savings with verified figures from Wales Audit Office. Welsh Assembly launched their own national review at huge cost only to be thrown out by the Minister who commissioned it. If you're ever, ever tempted to vote Labour please have a look at what these people are doing here. Pouring money at fantasy projects whilst the NHS has collapsed, the transport infrastructure is a real embarrassment. I don't know whether they are New, Old or I Can't Believe It's Not Labour - but they are stunningly bad. Its that bad that even the Welsh Conservatives seem to speak sense. And what's worse...proper Labour voters are running to UKIP who are importing their talent....
Last edited by: R.P. on Sat 21 Nov 15 at 13:35
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>> His argument falls down as soon as he starts comparing the PM's pay to others
>> in the public sector. He's either after his name in the paper or stupid. Probably
>> the first but you never know.
His wiki entry is stunningly brief. Leader of one of Lincolnshire's district councils given, for reasons I'm not clear, a fast track to the HoL.
The Telegraph also quotes him:
Lord Porter also took accused the European Union of "interfering" and "adding to the burden" on local government by imposing almost 70 per cent of the rules councils must abide by.
I'd love to see the justification for that 70% figure. Bet 95% of them would be no or very little different if we'd never been in the EU.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sat 21 Nov 15 at 13:41
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I'd need to think a bit more about a considered response but the PM's salary is utterly useless as a marker of what's reasonable.
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>> I'd need to think a bit more about a considered response
Could you include 'public servants', 'value for money' and 'efficiency' in that considered response, please.
>> but the PM's salary
>> is utterly useless as a marker of what's reasonable.
I think you'll find the point is, why does the leader of a council need to earn more than the PM?... and in that crude analysis, that is right IMO.
£100k would be plenty as the cap for a leader of a council, there's no need to pay more than that.
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Where did you get that figure from? The PM's salary shouldn't be used in any comparison crude or otherwise.
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Not a Council but the story that makes the headlines N of the Border.
Small College merges with bigger one 5 miles away. Principal gets a £300K payoff at a time when money in colleges is tight.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-34725944
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Don't tell ours...our small FE merged and the Principle was on 60k....
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Our local authority head gets £107k pay, plus benefits. I compare that to my director in a large UK PLC, his pay scale goes from £75k to £120k. He is probably on about £85k, judging by how long he has been in the job and his age. He gets benefits as well but his pension scheme is not final salary and he can be very easily fired. Both manage about the same number of staff overall.
Council staff were traditionally paid lower wages than other similar jobs because they were considered to be very secure and had a very good pension scheme. They are also paid by locals and should not be lording it over them - the local rag recently ran an article pointing out that 48 council staff had salaries that were more than double the local average wage.
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Sefton MBC Labour councillors this week rejected a joint LibDem/Tory bid to reduce the current number of councillors by a third to 44, which would have saved around £200,000.
Not surprising, as Labour have the overall majority and also control all nine Cabinet positions. Councillors these days, it seems, have little or no influence on what decisions are taken by the Cabinet other than to rubber stamp them.
tinyurl.com/ogx4g5o
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>> my director
>> in a large UK PLC, his pay scale goes from £75k to £120k. He is
Obviously you would know better than me, but I was a director of a large UK PLC more than once 20 years ago and i was earning a darn sight more than that.
I know salaries have dropped, but that is a low paying company.
Assuming, of course, that "director" means what i expect it to mean.
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Fenland DC John Clark Chief Exec had a salary of £163K last year according to their statement of accounts.
It's not a large council by many standards yet had three others on over £100K.
They have just sent out a survey to every household saying FDC have to make £1.6 million in cuts and asking us to choose where they are made from a list of options.
Needless to say councillors salaries and expenses weren't in those options.
Pat
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>> Needless to say councillors salaries and expenses weren't in those options.
Nothing to stop people suggesting such a thing.
Are Fenland doing what other Councils in East Anglia are doing and merging/sharing back office functions? My current work requires me to visit council's websites in order to check Council tax bills - noticed that some of the Lincolnshire councils and also a couple in Norfolk (IIRC) run a combined finance function.
Locally South Northants shares services, including a senior management team, with Cherwell.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sun 22 Nov 15 at 09:36
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>> Where did you get that figure from?
My head
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>> >> Where did you get that figure from?
>>
>> My head
>>
Fair enough, not much to base an entire organisation's pay structure on though ;-)
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>> Fair enough, not much to base an entire organisation's pay structure on though ;-)
>>
I'm a taxpayer.
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>> >> Fair enough, not much to base an entire organisation's pay structure on though ;-)
>> >>
>>
>> I'm a taxpayer.
>>
Okay, not sure why you're saying that though?
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>> Okay, not sure why you're saying that though?
>>
I want value for money... my money..... and I've worked with councils and think them to be the most incredibly inefficient wasteful outfits in this country.
I honestly thought my old lot were bad.. but they were saints compared to the local authority.
It's easy to waste public money.
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No one wants anyone to waste money.
I meant plucking a figure out of thin air isn't much to go on. There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems arbitary to me.
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It's just as easy to waste money in the private sector. Believe me having worked for a number of large International Companies there are just as many overpaid useless executives and consultants as you will find in the public sector. There are also just as many ill conceived projects that never see the light of day. The private sector is just better at hiding the waste.
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>> It's just as easy to waste money in the private sector.
The private sector pays for its own mistakes.
The public sector has us pay for it.
O.K. the consumer pays ultimately in the private sector, but at least I get to choose who I use.
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>> O.K. the consumer pays ultimately in the private sector, but at least I get to
>> choose who I use.
>>
That assumes you ever find out about. Chances are most consumers won't have a clue.
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>> I'm a taxpayer.
I'm not clear how that fact will persuade people with the skills needed to manage a large disparate organisation to work for less then they're getting now or less than their market rate.
While the Town Clerk might once have been a secure job awarded on 'buggins turn' I'm not convinced the same goes for LA CEO's now. In fact ISTR suggestions from Eric Pickles that the roles of CEO and Leader of the Council should be combined, making the CEO effectively a political appointment.
A comparator would be Head Teachers, again once seen as a secure pinnacle to one's career. Mrs B was temping in a local school last week and found one of her former heads working as a main grade English teacher. One set of bad exam results followed by a poor OFSTED and he was toast.
Are we sure this is the way to run organisations?
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/20/headteacher-killed-herself-after-ofsted-downgrade-inquest
www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/nov/21/secret-teacher-schools-turn-blind-eye-bad-managers-hit-targets-ofsted
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>> I'm not clear how that fact will persuade people with the skills needed to manage
>> a large disparate organisation to work for less then they're getting now or less than
>> their market rate.
'Market rate'?.... for the council?
They spin piffle to bamboozle everyone into thinking their inflated salaries are necessary. They are not.
If someone won't take the job because of the salary, hire someone else.
There is absolutely no need for salaries and perks reaching several hundred thousand pounds.
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"There is absolutely no need for salaries and perks reaching several hundred thousand pounds."
You won't get someone to type the CEO of a large Company's letters for that sort of money. Dido Harding of Talk Talk for example is on £6.8 million a year.
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One really needs professionals running councils, not pillocks who want us to vote for them. We, the consumer should vote on our goals, and professionals paid by results, not party mandarins, should be employed to carry them out. Or be sacked.
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>> 'Market rate'?.... for the council?
Yes. The market rate to run a large and disparate organisation. Is that a difficult concept?
>> If someone won't take the job because of the salary, hire someone else.
No one else wants it. The aims and objectives of Citizens Advice are as close to motherhood and apple pie as you could find. We still cannot get a housing lawyer in Northampton for £25K pa
>> There is absolutely no need for salaries and perks reaching several hundred thousand pounds.
Several hundred thousand is one thing. >£140 is another.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sat 21 Nov 15 at 20:13
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They're all making a fortune in the Smoke Bromp !
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>> There is absolutely no need for salaries and perks reaching several hundred thousand pounds.
If i manage a budget of £10m and I am 10% more efficient than the normal crowd, and I would be, I would save you £1m.
All else being equal that makes me worth several hundred thousand pounds.
And i wouldn't work for the council for less than i can make commercially. Well, i might, but not loads less.
I was once asked if i would take over a government project which ultimately lost several *billion* . They offered me about 1/10th of my normal rate. A rate for which they eventually did get someone.
So that "economy" worked well for them.
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>> I was once asked if i would take over a government project which ultimately lost
>> several *billion* . They offered me about 1/10th of my normal rate. A rate for
>> which they eventually did get someone.
>>
>> So that "economy" worked well for them.
>>
If you could convince me that local authorities responded to that sort of thinking and practice, I might agree with you.
They don't.
They are a monumental waste of our money.
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I would admit, with some not very debilitating degree of shame, to having occasionally been paid rather a lot for doing not very much, but I'd also confess, with some chagrin, to have also from time to time worked astonishingly hard for not a great deal of recompense.
Neither scenario seems to be an appropriately balanced equation really, but unfortunately that is the way the world works sometimes.
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>>unfortunately that is the way the world works sometimes.
On occasion.
But mostly I have been paid quite a lot for some quite hard stuff, much less for some easy stuff, occasionally under paid, but only very rarely over paid.
Although I might be a bit biased.
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>>They are a monumental waste of our money.
Yes, they are.
But imagine I could fix one. Imagine I could save you £5m per year. Would you pay me £1m?
Because you should.
So, the problem is not really their salaries, which is the bit that makes the headlines, the issue is their competence. Which never seems to be noticed.
It seems that people prefer "nobody should get £500k p.a." to the more sensible "People should be paid what they are worth, even if that is £500k p.a.".
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I get paid very little for what I do.....but I tell you what, incredibly rewarding, stressless, fun and on top of that a damned cheap cafe, free parking, dedicated bike parking, and do you know what I don;t believe I've been as happy in work years.
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>> stressless, fun and on top of that a damned cheap cafe, free parking, dedicated bike
>> parking
...free sheep...
;-)
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I'm told they're easier to catch than a Haggis ! :-)...
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Good for you. I would swap.
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So would many. But I assume it's not minimum wage but probably significantly less than you could be earning.
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I had feedback that I downplayed my answers in the interview...I ended up in CAB going from a volunteer to a paid staff with increasing internal responsibilities - I never signed up for that.
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>> I get paid very little for what I do.....but I tell you what, incredibly rewarding,
>> stressless, fun and on top of that a damned cheap cafe, free parking, dedicated bike
>> parking, and do you know what I don;t believe I've been as happy in work
>> years.
>>
Mine is similar. Not so rewarding as yours i'd guess (although I like handing over things that cheer people up, even if it's a sad occasion), but the rest of it fits.
It's the stress free bit that resonates the most. It's probably significantly improved my long term health outlook.
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Being happy in your work is much under-rated. I don't get paid loads, but I like most of my colleagues and some of my customers, and I have the time to do stuff I really enjoy. Enough is plenty, and so long as food is on the table and the home is warm anything above that in is gravy. Or greed.
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>> But imagine I could fix one. Imagine I could save you £5m per year. Would
>> you pay me £1m?
>>
>> Because you should.
>>
>> So, the problem is not really their salaries, which is the bit that makes the
>> headlines, the issue is their competence. Which never seems to be noticed.
>>
>> It seems that people prefer "nobody should get £500k p.a." to the more sensible "People
>> should be paid what they are worth, even if that is £500k p.a.".
>>
Yes, i'll wear that.
In the meantime, can we reel in these people and restrict their salaries?
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>> >>They are a monumental waste of our money.
>>
>> Yes, they are.
>>
>> But imagine I could fix one. Imagine I could save you £5m per year. Would
>> you pay me £1m?
>>
>> Because you should.
Not if there there is someone available who can save 10m for £100,000 a year; or not if squeezing the business damages it long term.
CEO rewards are not set by a free market at all. Most are simply not worth anything like what they are paid in salary, bonuses and share plans. Many end up being paid a fortune for failure, that is not the natural consequence of an efficient market.
The problem is remuneration committees and interfirm comparisons, which came in presumably at the behest of shareholders to try and stop boards awarding themselves undeserved pay rises. The foreseeable, but apparently unforeseen, consequence being that those who receive below average pay and awards for their role and business size can ratchet up their salaries fairly easily, resulting in a steady increase in the benchmark.
Shareholders' vain efforts to control vast increases have resulted in any restraint of basic pay being negated by bigger and bigger bonuses and 'performance' share plans. The pay of CEO of the UK plc I joined in 1998 had trebled by 2012, despite a substantial decline in profitability.
Last edited by: Manatee on Sun 22 Nov 15 at 12:13
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>>But imagine I could fix one. Imagine I could save you £5m per year. Would you pay me £1m?
>>Because you should
Sure. And if you lose £5m you owe us £1m.
The problem with paying managers large paychecks for specific metrics is they go all out for the metrics and sod the rest of the organisation. To a degree this happens whenever someone is incentivised and must be treated with great care as a raw measure of success.
In the NHS that creates Staffordshire type positions - cutting spending isn't always the same as saving money as other un-measured metrics are not identified until later (eg. death rates, or dirtiness of wards, or staff morale issues, etc).
If you save £5m in the bin-emptying budget, but households get their rubbish picked up every 4 weeks rather than 2 then it's not exactly a pure saving - it's a cost reduction with reduced service provision.
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>> The problem with paying managers large paychecks for specific metrics is they go all out
>> for the metrics and sod the rest of the organisation.
Pretty much exactly what's been going on in English schools from Blair>Coalition>Today. See my links above.
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>> In the NHS that creates Staffordshire type positions - cutting spending isn't always the same
>> as saving money as other un-measured metrics are not identified until later (eg. death rates
To be fair death rates were measured.
So what they did was to pay a large amount of money to go through the data and re-code as many deaths as possible so that they were recorded as having taken place while the patient was receiving palliative care, deaths which did not then count towards relevant measures.
Money well spent, I suppose they thought, even if to the best of my knowledge it did not bring back any of the dead patients.
Presumably that was also part of the reason that the problems in North Staffs took so long to come to light - great efforts were made to hit the targets, with sufficient degree of success to conceal the reality.
Measuring something is often a guaranteed way to ensure that you won't find out what really happens, especially when the measured party is marking its own homework.
Last edited by: Manatee on Sun 22 Nov 15 at 20:09
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"If you save £5m in the bin-emptying budget, but households get their rubbish picked up every 4 weeks rather than 2 then it's not exactly a pure saving - it's a cost reduction with reduced service provision."
And you don't have to be paid £1m pa to work that out. Lygo is quite right - that's what's happened with our local authority. The top wallahs have paid themselves massive salaries/pensions then, when they are 'rationalised' themselves, they walk away with massive redundancy payouts. Afterwards, of course, they will have made enough contacts to reappear as 'consultants', again pocketing vast sums. When this happens, services can only be further reduced in order to balance the books.
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One of my own favourite pieces of crap has re-emerged as a consultant for a company making ££££ selling very expensive drugs to the NHS through a mechanism of his own creation (as otherwise NICE would have deemed them too expensive to use)
www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/16/andrew-lansley-three-more-advisory-jobs-drugs-firm
God bless the money-makers and the 'trickle-down' theory of socio-economics.
Ha ha.
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>> The problem with paying managers large paychecks for specific metrics is they go all out
>> for the metrics and sod the rest of the organisation.
Of course. As happens with the police, the NHS and wverything else where simpletons believe that.metrics and targets will make the world a pretty place.
Hardly the fault of the employee concerned though.
You want it run well than you first need to define "well " and then get someone good enough to deliver "well" .
People are incapable of doing the first and unwilling to do the second. Far easier to go for plan b - put no effort in, whine, and blame the evil "fat cat" whatever the hell one of those is.
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>>You want it run well than you first need to define "well " and then get someone good enough to deliver "well" .
I think the word 'well' should initially be replaced with 'efficiently'.
Again, defining this is the 64 million dollar paycheck.
I suppose General Practice is the zenith of capitalism in the NHS - we take home the money left over after everything is paid for.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Sun 22 Nov 15 at 23:02
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>>I think the word 'well' should initially be replaced with 'efficiently'.
It doesn't matter what or which word you use, just so that you know what you're asking for.
Personally I think that finances and productivity are crap metrics or KPIs for some industries. For example, as I have said before, I want an effective police force, not an "efficient" one, especially since I have no idea what an efficient force might be.
However, on this and so many other things, we are totally screwed until the electorate gets a grip on the issues.
On the other subject about the worth of a CEO, there are many factors to consider;
e.g.
you need your shareholders/investors to be happy. If they are more happy with Mr. Jones, then Mr. Jones is worth a lot of money to you, even if he is crap at this job.
Relationships, regulator confidence, government, competitors, employees, partners, etc. etc. All of these things can change the value of your CEO beyond his actual contribution.
You get it or you don't, you agree with it or you don't.
Again, for example, there are no doubt many excellent project managers available for the £45k that a council will typically pay. There is a reason though that industry considers that most of the good ones are worth many times that.
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>> Relationships, regulator confidence, government, competitors, employees, partners, etc. etc. All of these things can change the value of your CEO beyond his actual contribution.
Don't forget gaffes - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner#The_speech
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Council pay structures - sooty123
