Town Hall fat cats may have to share cream

EDITOR'S COMMENT

SUDDENLY, so-called fat cats at Town Halls across the country are in the limelight again.
Next year, nearly 500 local authorities and associated bodies will be legally required to publish annual pay information.
Presumably, Camden Council pay bands will also be dragged out into the light of day.
Looking casually at salaries paid to senior council staff, it is easy to begrudge them or believe departmental managers and those in the higher echelons are grossly overpaid.
But running public affairs properly isn’t easy. Running a private company all comes down in the end to net profit and therefore the viability of the enterprise.
But people’s lives are often in the hands of public sector chiefs, so a great deal of talent – in some ways, more perhaps than that required in the private sector – needs to be displayed. .
More pertinent is not the actual pay but the differential between the highest paid in the public sector and those on the bottom rung.
This has become distorted in the past 30 years. In the early 1980s a council town clerk, now known as chief executive, in London would earn about eight times more than the lowest paid. Today, the differential can be as high as 20 times.
Camden’s chief executive Moira Gibb earns annually around £200,000 while a cleaner at the town hall may pick up £13,000 or £14,000 – a multiple of around 15.
It is this yawning gap that highlights the problem in the public sector.
If a High Pay Commission – proposed by think-tanks – became a reality, something at last may done to correct the lurch in pay.