Letters of protest at Wiltshire Council’s decision to give pay rises of up to £19,000pa to senior officers at a time of austerity have dismayed the unitary authority’s Tory leader Jane Scott.
She has revealed that the council is considered insensitive to make pay awards when there is a government freeze of just one per cent on pay increases.
“I’m disappointed that people don’t seem to trust the council but the people of Wiltshire should understand that we have reduced the senior management team of this council and it is now costing them less,” Mrs Scott has replied.
“We have reduced the back office costs and we are a leaner and more efficient authority. I would say we are certainly as lean, if not leaner, than any other council of a similar size.”
One angry letter she received demanded to know how much she earns and calling on her to justify it.
“I am very transparent about what I am paid,” she adds in a local newspaper interview. “It is on the council’s website. I work between 60 and 70 hours a week and I earn about £40,000.
“With the hours I put in, that’s not even minimum wages. If the person who wrote the letter wants to come and do it they are welcome.”
She believes that residents don’t fully understand the reasoning behind the pay rises for senior officers, pointing out: “It is frustrating that we haven’t got the whole story out to people.
“We haven’t looked at senior pay since about 2008 and when we found we were unable to recruit to certain posts and that we were losing people w e realised we needed to look at it.”
The difference in pay rates with other similar-sized councils was as much as £40,000pa, though Mrs Scott accepts why people are annoyed.
“But the fact is that we have saved money on our senior management team,” she says and insists: “We have delivered. We have cut our management costs and the largest slice of that reduction ha come from the top.
“We had too many chiefs and they cost too much.”
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