Highly-paid staff axed in Shropshire Council blitz
Tuesday 8th November 2011, 10:59AM GMT.
Shropshire Council has taken steps to clean up its high-pay culture – including getting rid of assistant directors who were paid up to £90,000 a year, its leader Keith Barrow vowed today.
Councillor Barrow said the situation had been ‘improved immensely’ by a senior management review.
A council statement of accounts for 2010/11 yesterday revealed that 285 officers on the council’s books received salaries of £50,000 a year or more in the last financial year.
He said: “That is what I inherited when I got the job. We had lots of senior managers and dozens of assistant directors.
“Assistant directors had a starting salary of £60,000 and every single year they would get a £5,000 increase until their salary reached £90,000 through incremental increases.
“We have got rid of all that and all assistant directors and now have service heads.
“We got rid of all incremental pay increases. That whole process has saved us £5 million.”
According to the local authority’s statement of accounts for the last financial year, six people at the local authority were paid more than £100,000.
The figures for the last financial year included salary, travel expenses and overtime payments.
Nine employees were on £80,000 to £84,999, seven were on £85,000 to £89,999, five were on £90,000 to £94,999, two were on £95,000 to £99,999 and six were on between £100,000 and £195,000.
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“A council statement of accounts for 2010/11 yesterday revealed that 285 officers on the council’s books received salaries of £50,000 a year or more in the last financial year.”
Absolute madness that so many are paid well over the national average wage for probably doing very ordinary jobs …
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I wonder if any of these people were the decision makers for Quantom Leap or indeed the awful timber adorning the theatre Severn which everyone except our stuffy councillors knew would fade and become the eyesore that it is now !!!
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Probably the same people responsible for imposing rip-off parking charges in Shrewsbury and surrounding towns. This is clearly how they fund their £50,000-plus salaries.
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Or the same useless managers who cant even figure out a simple way to collect cardboard! they are useless
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No doubt it includes the IT Manager who recommended buying £300 I pads to send e-mail instead of basic smart phones which come free with a contract?
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same people who chose to close wakeman school whilst protecting budgets for non-job educational advisors and back office LEA staff?
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Same manager who couldnt arrange to collect my bin for FIVE WEEKS over christmas. Nice to know they are well rewarded for doing such a great job…
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who ever came up with the idea of having a call centre for the council with long queues and annoying prerecorded messages is not worth 50,000
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the same managers who chose to cut staff pay by 6% whilst exempting themselves from the cut. They are an embarrasment to the Council. Shame on them.
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I bet the incompetent person who approved the Darwin Statue was on more than £50,000?
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I bet one of them is the manager who approved putting that stupid island in the middle of smithfield road which has already caused one car crash
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All you did Mr Barrow was to move them to other positions under another name so don’t try to kid the people of Shropshire. Only the ones that wanted to go went!
It’s the staff on less than 50k who are going to take a cut of up to 7k a year and there are many earning less than 30k who are going to suffer.
You have ruled by fear and turned the screw on the lower paid just to make a point.
Yet you still continue to spend money on refurbishing buildings as if it’s going out of fashion.
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Getting rid of of these high wage earners shouldve been done first and those employees on lower wages need not have had a pay cut. Those who are the back bone of the council. Simples.
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Big, fat retirement package anyone???
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i think mr barrow needs to remember when he’s complaining about high earners at the council that he is one of those number! He takes home over £50,000 from the council if you consider his special responsibility allowances are ON TOP of his basic councillors pay and other expenses. This is far too much in my opinion
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Well im sorry mr barrow but the figures speak for themselves you clearly have not done enough about this because this is far too many senior managers so please get back to work and look to atleast half this number in order to protect both rate payers and frontline services and low paid workers please
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What is not reported is how much they will be paid to leave…
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over a years salary in a tax free lump sum based on the last lot – £6.5 million on redundancies at shropshire council last year = scandlous
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a kings ransom no doubt.
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These people still exist just in different positions. We now have a matrix management structure which no one understands and the once assistance directors on £90k per year are now Directors on £110k a year. This is absolute nonsense and every employee knows it. Why don’t you just do us all a favour and leave Shropshire Council Mr Barrow! Employees can then get on with doing their day jobs in a happy state rather than the depressing ambiance that is currently the case.
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yeah what he should do is get his senior managers to sit down and debate a policy on high pay and how to reduce it. LOL
turkeys wont vote for Christmas!
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Now that’s some progress I suppose. Keep it up Keith Barrow and maybe Shropshire will return to the good sense of good old Salop.
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what about the highly paid councillors too? there are over 70 of them!!!! and they cost over a million pounds a year!!
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It is the whole councillor set up that needs shaking up.
Why should people get the equivilent of a wage for what used to be public service?
They are voted in on out dated party or should I say (petty) politics, not on ability, intelligence, previous record or even suitability.
Councillor Barrow’s own son was earning £3,500 per year in allowances a few years back, yet as reported in this paper, hardly attended any meetings.
There are no line managers, penalties for not acheiving targets,professional qualifications or special skills essential to being a councillor.
Worst of all is that there no limit to the length of time councillors can hold their posts. This is a massive problem with a council like Shropshire where council officers also tend to keep positions for decades.
The parochialism, manipulation and promotion of self interest as a consequence is a disgrace and counter productive to the proper democratic running of business which is after all always paid for by the taxpayers.
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Pathetic. Shropshire Council wasting our money again on fat cats with gold plated pensions its pathetic.
Taxi for Mr Barrow
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and guess what. theyre all going on strike next month to protest about how poor their pensions are! Honestly these people need to wake up and smell the coffee
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Yes and we have probably paid for their coffee and biscuits any way.
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Most public sector workers do not have a “gold plated pension” nor retire in the lap of luxury. But, yes, senior managers do and in this era of cut-backs, they should be ashamed.
Didn’t Shropshire Council pay more than £30,000 towards Kim Ryley’s pension last year? That’s more than our household income…..
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It’s hardly a blitz more of a limp firework display or a sparkler there are still far too many high paid managers there.
I suggest a plan to simply half them over-night by making each manager cover 2 services instead of one so you could be leisure centres AND libraries manager or planning AND economy manager or SCHOOLS and YOUTH Clubs manager etc etc
50% reduction overnight. simples.
You get my idea?
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Thanks for that. I was skim reading the comments and the word, “simples” jumped out at me. I have a pet theory that people who use this word hold opinions that are… I cannot think of a more polite way of putting it… silly. Having read your comment, my theory holds strong.
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same old tories
low paid frontline staff – cut and outsourced
But number of overpaid managers goes up
Meanwhile bankers bonuses up, share prices rising, unemployment sky high, industry is going abroad and they are rowing over europe
Are we back in the 80′s ??
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What the reporter fails to mention is that the figures for the previous year state there were only 186 staff on more than 50k per annum …. Now there is 285! … Is that what he calls a “steps to clean up its high-pay culture” … I think not!
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I have never seen so many people with the word manager in their title as at Shirehall, yet they dont actually supervise anyone or manage anything, they dont lead they just have a title as much as anything its based on longevity of service its absolutely rotten and mates get a leg up over mates.
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It would be nice to see total salaries compared year by year, in order to make any real judgement, and have more transparency over what pay-offs ex employees have had.
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nice work if you can get it…
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The majority of the 285 are teachers.
These figures are based on a period up to 31 March 2011. It is clear that there will be a reduction by 31 March 2012 based on the Management Review which has seen a large number of Senior Managers leave the council.
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“He said 70 staff at schools moved into the £50,000 to £54,000 bracket in 2010/11 after a national pay increase for teachers.”
Some people wouldn’t know facts or the truth if it smacked them in the face with a wet kipper, it seems!!!!
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has he really got rid of them? or is this just bravado? Should we really be celebrating people getting thrown out of work? Espeically when the counicl loses their experience and skills and the public purse pays handsomely for their redundancy and retirement plan.
I doubt long term their removal really saved the public purse and I doubt that many really left – often they come back as consultants or get redeployed anyway
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Don`t look now but Berlusconi is going to be looking for job very soon. He would fit in well at the Shirehall.
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clearly keith barrow sees getting rid of public sector employees as his main focus in life, so he has failed in this regard by actually increasing the senior pay bill on his watch, in this sense he should man up and step aside, and let a real pro come in and sort this mess out. Atleast 50% less management should be the minimum target. I would expect to see frankly half a dozen such senior posts in an organisation like shropshire council for there to be around 300 is just insane. You have to also consider that this is even without most of the services being run by the council any more, so all procurement done by west mercia supplies who will have half a dozen managers on 50k+. all highways by enterprise who will have half a dozen managers on 50k+. bins by veolia, more management on 50k+, engineering by enterprise, moer managers, more 50k+ salaries, care homes run by southern cross and coverage care etc, more managers there on 50k+ so lets see the true picture, lets see how many of these parasitic quasi private, publically funded corporations also have duplicate managers to shadow the council managers and you will see the realily is that there are probably moer like 500 managers on 50k+ running shropshire council services, so there true picture is EVEN WORSE than this!
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Mr Barrow, If you are serious about public service and making things better for the people of Shropshire, lead by example. You are one of those high paid individuals. Stop drawing your allowances now. We’ll let you have the cost price of public transport to meetings and that is all. Then the other councillors should follow.
How ridiculous to be making a stand about high pay when you are part of the problem. The council is bankrupt, we can’t even afford paper. In the private sector the directors would have no choice but to stop their drawings.
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Ok then, if the situation has been “improved immensely”, back up this statement. How many employees are currently earning in excess of 50K?
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telford council only has 28 senior managers and plans to cut this to 13. Ok shropshire council is bigger, but 300 is too many
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What ‘axe’? what ‘blitz’? I think you mean Golden Handshakes with nice pensions in perpetuity. Next time it should read ‘Spending more time with the family..but doing very nicely..ta’
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Yet again Shropshire Council needs to learn from the better labour-run Telford Council who are slimming the number of senior managers they employ down to a mere 13, cutting the Cheif Executives pay and generally clamping down on top pay to protect the lower paid and the frontline services.
Well done Telford, watch and learn Barrow
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It just shows more signs of a council that is out of control. This level of high pay is unacceptable in an area of the UK which is low waged we should drive them out and cull the senior management further like what has happened in the private sec/real world.
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Well Done Keith Barrow! Please keep it up and stick to your guns. If they are moaning you must be doing something right. Public sector workers have had it too easy for too long. Mr Barrow is right to cull them all it is both neccessary and right and in the long run we will all be grateful for such leadership which will make us Great Britain again and not the Socialist Soviet Republic of Gordon Browns Britain.
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blue boy-
and what do you suggest Keith Barrow does about his own £45,000 expenses? Or do you think he’s such a great leader that he’s worth that? How about Kym Riley’s income? People are angry with Cllr Barrow because his council’s elite is choosing to implement the cuts in a way that disregards its own frontline employees (people who do vital work for us), and takes vital frontline services from those who need them most (children, the elderly, the disabled), while its own perks seem largely unaffected (new office, iPads, etc etc). ‘Grateful’ isn’t the word I’d choose to describe my feelings about the way in which Cllr Barrow and friends are running our county- ‘appalled’ would be closer to it. I’ll be very interested to see what happens at the next election.
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Actually ‘the blitz’ was a civilian shock and awe terror bombing campaign directed against the brave british public of my parents generation. I am disgusted that on armistice day the leader of the council is using the language of terror against working people. What an inappropriate choice of words. Next he will be claming he’s inflicting a 9.11 on them or a Hiroshima. Sick.
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Agreed.
People who use hyperbole should be shot.
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Parasites – the lot of them. None of these “execs” would last 2 minutes in the commercial world.
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Who else will hold the Knife and twist it?
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Why do Shropshire Council Councillors cost much more than Telford & Wrekin’s? They each receive £11,514 a year. But to charge the same per resident as at T&W, they would need to take a pay cut to £9,969. That would be a FAIR cut.
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