Labour salaries request rejected by Camden Council

Published: 8 April 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

LABOUR councillors remain at loggerheads with Camden Council’s chief executive Moira Gibb after she once again refused to release exact salary details of the Town Hall’s best-paid council officials.

Taxpayers can only guess how much of their money is used on the pay and bonus package for the top circle of civil servants at the council because Camden will only publish broad potential salary brackets on its website.

Labour has pledged to install a more open system if they win back control of the Town Hall at next month’s elections.

Ms Gibb wrote to the party’s deputy leader Councillor Jonathan Simpson on Thursday – the day the New Journal published a chart of possible six-figure salaries – and said the information would stay locked away for the time being.

She said that as bonuses are paid on a performance-related basis, making details public would reveal how far they had hit work targets.

“In effect we would be publishing individual performance assessments,” said Ms Gibb. “Our employees have, to date, had a right in law to privacy in respect of performance details. Also, putting pay information in the public domain allows a ‘compare and contrast’ amongst chief officers and could create employee relations problems for us to manage.”

Labour councillor Theo Blackwell, who has chaired a finance scrutiny panel for the last four years, said: “Camden has more restrictive rules on this than some private companies, and you have to ask how we have got to that situation.”