Council spent more than Pounds 35m on pay-off deals [Edition 2]
0 Comments | West Briton, The; Truro (UK), Jul 8, 2010 | by TONY BONNICI
CORNWALL Council spent more than Pounds 35m in pay packages and redundancy deals last year on its top 2.5 per cent of staff, it has emerged.
of The figure, which includes senior teachers as well as department managers and service directors, was the result of the move to unitary status.
In total some 560 people received pay and severance deals of Pounds 50,000 plus – up from 374 in Cornwall County Council the previous year.
a That includes 263 teaching staff, whose salaries are set nationally.
This week the authority said the headline figure – Pounds 10m more than the county’s entire fire service budget – was a major Pounds one-off expenditure, taking into account severance payments to seven chief executives of the former county and district councils, plus a number of other high-earning staff. They said 87 have since left the authority.
Of those that remain only seven – including chief executive Kevin Lavery, who took up his post since the change to a unitary council, on a Pounds 200,000 salary plus Pounds 38,000 pension contributions – are on pay deals worth more than Pounds 100,000. Altogether they cost taxpayers Pounds 1.25m.
The average salary in Cornwall is less than Pounds 23,000. The revelations, which have angered councillors, come amid warnings by council leader Alec Robertson that the county should be prepared for swingeing cuts to local services as the Government has told the authority to make at least Pounds 13m savings on its Pounds 1.154 billion budget.
And council chiefs have been told to prepare for a 25 per cent cut in their budgets.
A Cornwall Council spokesman said: “This list is not based on salary levels but on the total level of remuneration which includes pension contributions and any compensation paid for redundancy or termination of contract.
“This last element has been an unusually significant factor this year because of the transition to the new council. “The tables appear to show an increase in the numbers of staff whose remuneration is more than Pounds 50,000.
“This is largely due to the creation of the new council, which saw staff from the seven councils integrated into one organisation.
Cornwall Council is one of the largest unitary councils in England.
It has a workforce of more than 22,500 staff.
According to the figures from Cornwall Council, nearly Pounds 80,000 in severance pay was made when its chief finance officer left after only nine months
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