£100,000 elite club

Published: 12 March 2010

• TWENTY-three executives of Islington Council are paid salaries of more than £100,000, according to a Sunday Times analysis.
Islington’s chief executive, John Foster, was paid £210,000. Although this was less than the £540,000 he received in his final year at Wakefield Council, but that included a generous pay-off.
There seems to be an elite class of highly privileged bureaucrats who shift around the country, each move punctuated by an overly generous pay-off. All at the taxpayer’s expense. I used to think that working for the council was all about public service. Now it’s more about how much money you can squeeze out of the public purse. Also, what exactly does the chief executive do?
On top of this comes news that  the council’s pension deficit for 2008-2009 was £34,846,000, and is growing. The Local Government Pension Scheme, which guarantees final salary pensions, is much more generous than most private sector pensions and places a heavy burden on taxpayers.
Union pressure means local government is reluctant to face the reforms it must introduce to bring these deficits down. Across the country, £1 in every £5 in council tax is spent on employer contributions to council pensions scheme. These gold-plated schemes should be closed and council employees should make bigger contributions to their pensions. Most private companies are closing generous final-salary pensions. The council should do the same. Why are we subsidising their pensions when most private pension payouts are going down?
TIM NEWARK
Islington Taxpayers Alliance