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TOWN HALL MANAGER WAGES PAID FOR BY COUNCIL TAX

Thursday January 31,2008

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A growing class of town hall middle managers on packages of £50,000 or more are eating up an increasing chunk of local households' council tax, according to a report.

Local authorities across the UK employ an average of 66 people on packages of more than £50,000 -nine times the 1997 average of seven employees - according to research by lobby group the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA).

The growth in high-paid staff is more than double the rate seen in the rest of the economy, where numbers with remuneration of £50,000 or more have gone up by about three times, said the TPA, which campaigns for lower taxes.

The average council spent more than £4 million on these staff in 2006/07, with a total bill for more than 30,000 high-earners across the country of almost £2 billion - the equivalent of £1 in every £11 raised from council tax.

Some 12,600 local authority staff were equalling or outstripping MPs with packages of £60,000 or more.

TaxPayers' Alliance chief executive Matthew Elliott said the growth in middle management numbers came against a backdrop of increases in average council tax for a band D property from £646 to £1,248 over the past decade.

Meanwhile, town hall bosses were arguing that they needed to cut frontline services like rubbish collection and care for the elderly in order to avoid council tax capping by central Government.

"With council tax doubling in the past decade, it's extremely disappointing that town halls have chosen to hire a new class of middle managers, many of whom are being paid more than MPs," said Mr Elliott.

"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."

Figures taken from local authorities' annual records showed that officials receiving packages of £50,000 or more - including bonuses, benefits in kind and severance payments, but not pension contributions - rose from an estimated 3,341 in 1997/98 to 30,889 in 2006/07, said the TPA.

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WHAT DO WE EXPECT .....

31.01.08, 10:09am

When civil servants are not bound by the laws of the land or held accountable for their own incompetence or corruption.

Investigate the figures for dismissals or any disciplinary measures in local authorities and they are astoundingly low, Why?

Because morons are promoted to get them out of public view hidden in side offices where they can do no more harm that the public may directly see!

Billions of pounds are wasted on protecting criminals in shambolic closed hearings when complaints are made even criminal offences are not investigatesd by the Pollice who are also civil servants.

CORRUPTION, INCOMPETENCE, and who gives a flying poop after all it is only taxpayers money and the great unemployable now have jobs and golden pensions at the expense of the rest of society.

I worked for many years in a government IT department and saw people paid £22k to regularly play solitaire because no one dare let them touch any real work for fear of the amount of damage they would cause, one dayd incompetence creating three weeks work.

And having access to all departments from education and social services to police and fire even the so called management I would estimate a cropping of staff by 60% accross the board would produce VAST improvements immediately if done on ability, rather than race, gender or time served as it is presently.

• Posted by: The_Way_I_See_It • Report Comment