Thursday 12 April 2018

Town Hall rich list - Carmarthenshire


With the annual Taxpayers Alliance Town Hall rich list published yesterday Carmarthenshire's entry, for senior officers pocketing over £100,000 per year, with pension contributions, looks relatively brief, even with two over £150,000:




However, the figures were taken from the 2016/17 council accounts which showed a somewhat confusing picture, muddled by in-year restructuring and retirements. A more realistic picture can be found in the annual pay policy approved last month:

Chief Executive, £171,539
Corporate Directors, £123,218 x 5 (one is also deputy chief executive)
Assistant Chief Executive, £102,917
Heads of Service, £90,709 x 14

If we add the annual pension pots, roughly about 12%, the 14 heads of service hover towards £100,000 apiece, and so the total bill for the 21 top brass, (at the top end of the pay scales), in this largely rural county, is somewhere in the region of £2.4m, give or take a few grand.

The chief executive is not part of the local government pension scheme, not since the unlawful pension pay rise 'arrangement' exposed by the Wales Audit Office, and bloggers, in 2014. The second officer over £150,000 is the Director of Communities, Jake Morgan, who receives an extra 10% for being deputy chief executive, a deputy is essential of course as Mr James is a busy man.

The chief executive's pay is bumped up by returning officer fees and the fees for the May 2017 local elections will show up in the next accounts. In 2012 it was £20,000 and, controversially, paid in advance and before the number of contested seats were known. And more than many residents could hope to earn in a year. Fees from other elections (and there's been an election bonanza over the past couple of years) are paid to him direct by Welsh or Westminster governments, so do not show up in council accounts.

Mr James also enjoys the fringe benefits of having publicly funded staff, resources and computer facilities at his disposal to pursue his private legal battles, as I have discovered.
When he nearly retired a couple of years ago he almost walked off with £446,000, a remarkable reward for a rap sheet which included illegal payment scandals and the creation of a toxic, bullying, anti-democratic culture. In the end, he decided to stay.

So, as the potholes grow and multiply, so do the wallets of the top brass. If nothing else, this is probably one of the arguments for reducing the number of councils as these figures, in greater or lesser degrees are replicated across 22 local authorities in Wales, serving a total population roughly the size of Greater Manchester.

The Welsh Government are still considering a £95,000 cap on exit packages, and a few years back Plaid tried unsuccessfully to stop the extra cash for returning officers for local elections, arguing that it was part of the job description anyway. Attempts by the Labour group to reduce the pay of two new directors, to about £110,000, were defeated last year. The CEO joined the 'debate' in the council chamber and proceeded, shamelessly, to influence the vote.
Any post with a remuneration of over £100,000 requires the approval of full council, so although we have seen this process manipulated more than once in Carmarthenshire, control over senior pay, whilst subject to national pay scales, ultimately lies with the councillors.

When a Labour councillor raised the subject of eye-watering levels of chief officer pay a few weeks ago Mr James took to his keyboard to write an angry email berating the councillor for publicly embarrassing him and his colleagues. Presumably Mr James is burning the midnight oil sending another one to the Taxpayers' Alliance...

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