Revealed: What Shropshire council bosses are really paid - with some close to £200,000

Top of the pay list is David Sidaway the chief executive of Telford & Wrekin Council whose total remuneration is a cool £195,697 according to The Tax Payers Alliance.

This is made up of a basic salary of £169,852, with pension contributions of £25,845 making up his total package. He now earns more than the Prime Minster.

Close behind comes Andy Begley, the chief executive of Shropshire Council whose bank balance gets boosted by an annual salary of £163,000. Pension contributions into his retirement fund amount to another £28,510, completing his package.

None of the council officials are listed as receiving bonus payments.

As a yardstick, the Prime Minister had a salary entitlement of £164,951 in 2022-23.

A spokesperson for Telford & Wrekin Council said the amount people are paid related to it being a complex organisation responsible for services to hundreds of thousands of people.

“The council is a complex organisation with a multimillion pound budget providing over 700 services to hundreds of thousands of people.

“Senior leaders are paid in line with the level of responsibility they have – which includes significant legal and social responsibilities - and in line with other authorities to ensure the borough attracts people with the right skills and experience for these vital roles.

“Appointments are always made in a clear and transparent way as set out in the council's constitution.”

Councillor Gwilym Butler, Shropshire Council’s cabinet member for finance, corporate resources and communities said that the figures represented each year by the Taxpayers’ Alliance do not reflect actual salaries as they also include payments such as pension contributions.

He said: “The figures represented each year by the Taxpayers’ Alliance do not reflect actual salaries as they also include payments such as pension contributions.

“Shropshire Council has a gross budget of over £700m and levels of pay are equivalent to other local authorities of a similar size.

"Councils all over the country are facing significant pressure from rising demand for essential services that residents use every day.

"We must continue to attract the most experienced and effective staff where they are needed to help us overcome this challenge.

“We expect the salaries paid to our staff to be repaid many times over as they lead the way to a healthy future for Shropshire.”

Beneath the top two highly paid officials, there are now a total of 31 council officials in Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin borough now pulling in more than £100,000.

Some 12 of those officers in Shropshire, which is facing budget cuts of more than £60 million and looking to impose a green bin tax of £52 a year, are listed by the Tax Payers Alliance as having "undisclosed" roles.

If readers think they have read all this before, they have.

It's the 17th year that the TaxPayers’ Alliance has assembled what they call the most comprehensive list of council employees in the UK in receipt of over £100,000 in total remuneration in a single financial year.

Most of the data is publicly available but many would struggle to find it, which the Alliance says is one of the reasons it collates it all every year.