Borough pay rates pull ahead

Pay rates in Telford - long considered the "poor cousin" of Shropshire - are starting to pull ahead from the rest of the county for the first time, new figures revealed today.

Average gross earnings in the borough are now running at £25,872 ,compared with £25,275 for the area covered by Shr-opshire County Council.

It is good news for Telford & Wrekin Council, which has been trying to encourage well paid, skilled jobs to the borough to replace its histo-ric reliance on the low-paid "metal-bashing" industry, now largely a thing of the past.

But Telford is still lagging behind its near neighbours Wolverhampton and Birmingham, where workers collect £27,386 and £28,252 respectively.

And the gap between Telford pay packets and the national average has widened over the past year.

Telford workers now collect 86 per cent of the national figure - down from 90 per cent last year.

The average for the whole West Midlands in 2007 is £26,557, compared with the UK national average of £29,999.

The figures were compiled by GMB, Britain's general union, from the recently published 2007 annual survey of earnings by the Office of National Statistics.

Joe Morgan, GMB secretary for the West Midlands, said the region used to be famous for its manufacturing jobs and it was vitally important to replace them with well paid, highly skilled services jobs.

"Economic development is a top priority if we are not to fall further down the pay league," he said.