1 August - Council employment is just a self interested gravy train
A few eyebrows were raised when it was revealed that Bexley’s Chief Executive
Jackie Belton had been
earning around forty grand a year from job pay offs, let alone her inflated salaries.
It was always thus.
In 2011 when Sir Eric Pickles (now Lord Pickles) was Secretary of State for Communities my friends MIck Barnbrook and Elwyn Bryant
organised a petition asking the Council to reduce the salaries of their
Directors which topped £200,000; twice what the Secretary of State had said should be the maximum.
2011 was peak lying time for Bexley Council. If you think they are too often the most
part appalling liars now you should have been watching them back then.
Elwyn and Mick helped by John Watson and Nicholas Dowling trudged the streets
for weeks gathering the required 2,000 signatures but Bexley Council, crooked as ever,
refused to accept the petition.
They said that Elwyn and Mick had falsified the salaries stated on the petition
and they had therefore misled residents. How ironic; the salaries were my only
contribution to the petition. It had been sent to me for an opinion and I
suggested that instead of using approximate salary figures they took them directly from
Bexley’s website so that there could be no argument.
Despite that Bexley Council rejected the petition by claiming those figures, their own figures, were wrong.
As Councillor Linda Bailey famously declared at the very same time; “we can do what we like”. ††
Despite the setback Elwyn’s interest in the subject continued. When the News
Shopper revealed that Bexley’s Chief Executive Gill Steward was given £94,000 as
a reward for failure he asked his MP James Brokenshire what he thought about it.
Mr. Brokenshire was Communities Secretary at the time but thanks to Boris
Johnson’s clear out only a week later he didn’t have to reply to the letter.
That came from a Civil Servant who said the guidance recommended that large severance
packages should be considered by Full Council in public.
Other recommendations are that senior executives voluntarily reduce their
earnings, that Chief Executives should be shared between local authorities and
that severance payments should be capped at £95,000. The immoral gravy train
which is senior Council job appointments is totally out
of hand when the Merry Go Round of job swapping becomes the norm.
It was not always thus as another local commentator reminds me…
Your blogs about ex-gratia payments and salaries make alarming reading. I remember
as a child council workers were paid less than those from the private sector on the premise that they
would receive a better pension. †
More recently an argument was made that to attract the ‘right’ kind of applicant salaries commensurate
with the private sector HAD to be offered - without any regard for the
advantageous pension benefits. One of the reasons we face the incredible amounts now on offer.
George Osborne, when he was chancellor, saw what was happening and how employees on a final salary pension were getting out of
control and he put limits on these pensions.
The law of unintended consequences took over and GPs (among others) began to retire because without an enhanced pension
there was little point in continuing to work. Council staff saw a way around this
and simply left one job for another collecting another severance payment on the way to the next highly
paid job. Something not available to GPs. It seems that
Bexley Council has not seen through this or is happy to allow it. Probably the latter.
Since I retired myself I took on an occasional job with a nearby borough, only for a few weeks a year.
I’m signed up to the Local Government Pension Scheme and have been amazed at
how much pension I have accrued. I pay only 5·5%
on a sliding scale whilst the employer contributes another 18·5%. Staggering! On top of that
I’m given life insurance and ill health pension rights!!
I’ve been told that the previous pension scheme was even more generous. Mr. Pickles should have sorted
that out but alas it didn’t happen.
† I remember my father saying the same thing when I joined the GPO in 1962.
It might be more acceptable if Council employees were more competent than they
are but one only has to look at the design of Bexley’s roads and roundabouts or the latest bin
cock-up to know that they aren’t.
†† Actually “I can do what I like”.