Minister urges councils ‘tackle six-figure pay packets’
New guidance changes rules on pay and dismissal for senior officers
The minister’s call for employers to revise generous salaries came as councils prepare to approve their remuneration plans for the year ahead.
Pickles has written to local authorities across the country to highlight new guidance on pay and employment practices brought in under the Localism Act.
The new rules means that severance payouts will need to be democratically approved and legislation on dismissing senior officers is changing. Recommendations that all six-figure payouts for senior council officers should be shown to full council for approval are also included.
In the letter Pickles told councils that if they do not take action to make spending on pay more transparent he was “ready to take steps to require them to”.
The secretary of state also plans to revise dismissal and disciplinary procedures for councils. Under his plans, employers in the sector will no longer need to use an independent investigator to review misconduct by senior officers before they can be sacked.
However, if a local authority wanted to remove their chief executive they will still need to gain a resolution from the full council. The council will also have to approve the sacking of a monitoring officer or chief financial officer before dismissals can go ahead.
“For too long, local government has made severance pay arrangements away from the eyes of those who get left with the bill: the taxpayer,” Pickles said.
“Town hall chief executives are well paid so if they are not up to the job councils need to part ways with them fairly. Quietly agreeing to thousands in under-the-counter parachute pay-offs for departing bureaucrats is not the way to achieve this.”
Pickles letter comes as research from pressure group the Taxpayers Alliance showed that 28,754 local authority staff were paid more than £50,000 a year, which cost taxpayers £1.9 billion in 2011-12.
Sumeet Lawrence Barla pgdm 2nd
