Cabinet member steps into row over council pay

Councillor Abdul Jabbar

OLDHAM Council has moved to clarify the salaries of its top earners following national research into the country’s highest paid local authority staff.

A report by the TaxPayers Alliance used data from 2011/12 to report that Oldham Council employed nine people on a wage higher than £100,000.

The posts were chief executive, executive director of neighbourhoods, executive director of commercial services, deputy chief executive, executive director of commissioning, borough treasurer and chief financial officer, chief of staff, borough solicitor and monitoring officer and director of adult social services.

Vacant

Three of those posts — deputy chief executive, executive director of commissioning and borough treasurer — are now vacant and the council are only looking to recruit someone new to the borough treasurer role.

Two post-holders have also changed since 2011/2 with Carolyn Wilkins and Mark Reynolds replacing Charlie Parker and Claire Fish as chief executive and chief of staff respectively — both on lower basic salaries.

The current basic salaries (excluding pension) for the posts now are chief executive (Carolyn Wilkins) £160,000, executive director of neighbourhoods (Elaine McLean) £138,000, executive director of commercial services (Emma Alexander) £132,000, chief of staff (Mark Reynolds) £83,980, borough solicitor and monitoring officer (Paul Entwistle) £90,987 and executive director of adult social services (Paul Cassidy) £100,000.

Councillor Abdul Jabbar, Oldham Council cabinet member for finance and human resources, said: “Oldham Council has a policy of being transparent and open and the salaries of the most senior managers are published on the council website.

“The salary for the position of chief executive of the council is £160,000.

“The holder of this position manages a gross revenue budget of £605 million and is responsible for more than 2,850 members of staff. This does not take into account schools and other companies we have an interest in. This figure is comparable to that of neighbouring local authorities.

“Over the last few years the council has significantly reduced the number of management positions and this has saved the local authority money at a time when budgets are drastically decreasing all the time.”