“Local authorities should study these findings carefully to see where savings can be made instead of using their half-billion-pound PR machine to obscure their finances from taxpayers.”

News of the astonishing salaries paid to civil servants will anger millions of council taxpayers who were warned last week to expect their bills to increase by about four per cent.

That will push average bills up by almost £45 a year to £1,145 from April – a doubling of the tax in England since Labour came to power in 1997.

The TPA figures reveal that local authorities across the UK are now employing an average of 66 middle-ranking managers on lucrative packages worth more than £50,000 a year.

It is a steep rise from six years ago when councils employed on average 20 such managers, while in 1997 there were only seven per authority.

The growth in highly-paid staff is more than double the rate seen in the rest of the economy.

Figures taken from councils’ annual records showed that officials getting deals worth £50,000 or more – including bonuses and  benefits but not pension contributions – rose from an estimated 3,341 in 1996-7 to 30,889 in 2006-7.

At least 12,600 of these staff equal or outstrip MPs’ salaries, with attractive packages of £60,000 or more.

The fatcats cost an average £4.2million per council but there are wide variations between areas, according to the TPA.

Birmingham City Council spent the most overall, with 823 employees earning £50,000 or more, costing a total of £50.5million or £50.19 per household.

It was followed by Kent with 713, costing £44.8million or £32.42 per household; Hertfordshire with 647, costing £39.8million or £37.58 per household;  Essex with 586, costing £36.3million or £26.64 per household; and Hampshire with 453, costing £27.7million or £21.89 per household.

But when figures were adjusted to take account of population size, councils in London spent the most on highly-paid staff.

The biggest bills per head of population were the London boroughs of Newham (£89.90), Westminster (£85.40) and Kensington and Chelsea (£80.73).

Under-fire council chiefs were last night forced to defend the enormous wage bills. John Ransford, deputy chief executive of the Local Government Association which represents more than 400 councils in England and Wales, said: “The people who earn these salaries are responsible for multi-million-pound budgets in highly complex organisations.

“And to attract the best and brightest people to deliver value for money, you have to pay a suitable wage.

“Councils are responsible for ensuring that more than £100billion of taxpayers’ money is spent wisely and provides the services local people want and need.

“When senior salaries in the private sector are compared to senior salaries in the public sector, the taxpayer gets very good value for money.” The latest TPA research was the second in its Council Spending Uncovered series. Its first report revealed that councils were spending £450million a year on publicity and marketing.

The TPA said it was normal for wage rises to be higher than inflation in a growing economy and it was to be expected that more people over time would earn £50,000 and above.

But the rise in local authority employees on those figures had been “phenomenal, far outstripping the rate of increase in the economy as a whole”.

It stressed that not every penny of spending in areas it was examining was wasteful but that there were “significant savings” which could be made, easing the burden on families and pensioners while protecting important services.

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