Nov 2008 11

Thurrock council's chief executive quits8

Yesterday we were contacted by Mike Casey of Your Thurrock – a superb grassroots new media current affairs website – with the surprise that yet another chief executive has left Thurrock council.  What repercussions will this have for Thurrock’s taxpayers? It doesn’t look good considering the soaring salaries chief executives get jumping from one council to another, the culmination being the astonishing £220,000 given to the new chief executive of Suffolk County Council earlier in the year.

Being a Thurrock resident, I was invited last night to discuss the matter, talk a bit about the TPA and the areas in local government we’re watching out for:

If anything, the priority for Thurrock council should be that they keep the chief executive’s salary under control – we simply do not have the economy to pay for ever-increasing public sector salaries.  They must ensure the search to find a new chief executive is cost efficient – Three Rivers council feared searching for a new chief executive would cost so much they decided to give into his demands and let him work a four-day-week on full pay. 

Finally a bit of advice for Thurrock council: don’t go with another chief executive from another council.  Across the country we’ve seen our taxes double and service cutbacks.  The current crop of chief execs, switching posts like they were in a game of musical chairs, just aren’t delivering value for money and quality services.  Perhaps it’s worth appointing a businessman or someone with a record of efficiency and cost cutting, who doesn’t need a six figure salary and who can return some cash back to Thurrock taxpayers’ pockets?  Thurrock council can potentially take the radical step and look outside the box of current officers and work that bit harder to lower council tax next year. We intend to keep a close eye on them to see whether they will opt for innovative change or stick with the wasteful status quo.

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  • Steve Robson

    yeah like they’re going to be able to find a person with that record in the private sector who doesn’t want a six figure salary.
    think…bankers…bonuses
    if they foolw your advice, they’ll either get a crook, someone useless or someone who doesn’t want a six figure salary because they want a seven figure one.
    you people live in a dream world where the private sector are concerned. You think they deliver great services and pay their leaders next to nothing. Actually they provide variable services (sometimes great, sometimes ok, sometimes useless – the same as the public sector) and pay their leaders huge salaries – much more than £220K pa – can you read Accounts, you’ll find out.

  • Tim

    Yeh, steve, that’s right – we may as well just keep giving fortunes to those who fail.
    Perhaps there are ambitious young(ish) types who would be very happy with, say £60,000, make a name for themselves as efficient managers and then go on to really deserve a £100,000+ salary, rather than getting in the same old useless bunch from another council and swap around again, 5 minutes (and hundreds of thousands of pounds) later.

  • Steve Robson

    You really are completely mad. You people would destroy the whole country. Thank god, people who really understand, even in the Tory Party will never listen to you.
    I guarantee you it would fail in ways you can’t even imagine. According to you all CEO’s fail because your goal is impossible; excellent services at nil cost. It is so much easier in the private sector where people may demand excellence, but are actually prepared to pay for it. Even then they rarely get it.
    Even delivering good services at a reasonable cost (as defined objectively rather than by your prejudices) will be well beyond some young turk on £60K. Trying to achieve that is why local authorities pay proper (though well below private sector rates) salaries to get good people.
    Your case would have more credibility if you could name just one Chief Exec who you see as effective and value for money. Otherwise, it is obvious that you a-priori define all as failures by virtue of being Chief Execs in the public sector.

  • http://www.taxpayersalliance.com Tim Aker

    The assertion that those in the public sector are paid less is, on average, bunk. From Leo McKinstry in today’s Express:
    “According to one recent study, the real average earnings of state employees – once pension contributions are taken into account – reach £33,000 a year compared with £23,000 in the private sector.”

  • Steve Robson

    We’re talking about a CEO here not average staff. And surely it depends what they do.
    What I’d really love to see, which can’t happen because it would harm real people, would be for us to hand a Council over to the TPA and let you recruit everyone.
    Lets say Thurrock. You say £60K for the CEO, so based on that lets say £45K for, the Directors and then the rest of the staff earning between £12K and £35K. No pensions for anyone. You choose how many, but I guess it wont be a lot of staff.
    Lets watch you recruit your FD for £45K from the private sector – a newly quualified at best. Then you’ve got to get accountants (I assume you do want to account for tax spending) and laywers, all for under £35K, not to mention Social Workers (you do believe in child protection surely?) and all the other people you need. All recruited from the (allegedly) low paying private sector.
    Very little scope for heirarchy here. I agree with flat structures, but sounds to me like 100 staff per Manager, making it hard to develop the junior staff, which I suspect you do get for £15K!
    Can you really not see this would be a disaster? Can you really not see that no Council will EVER employ a Chief Exec on £65K and pay the pathetic salaries that you think public sector workers deserve. They would just have numerous vacancies and yes it would be cheap for a while, but as public health, public protection, child protection and environmental services broke down, so too would society and Thurrock under the TPA would return to the dark ages.

  • Malcolm Hogg

    I don’t believe there is any comparison between a CEO in a private company and a Chief executive of a council. The latter only has to deal with one side of the business equation of income v expenditure….the expenditure side. The income part is guaranteed, therefore it doesn’t need a genius entrepeneur, just a capable administrator. As there is no risk of being sacked for underperforming the salary should reflect these facts

  • Phil Stringer

    I think that too many people are seeing this in black & white, which it most certainly isn’t.
    It’s not necessarily that the CE of a local council is getting £200k+ a year, it’s more that, as they fail to control expenditure in their Councils, rather than be sacked, they move on into another position in another Council at an even greater salary. Those who replace them will also want a higher salary than the predecessor . . and so it goes on. It is often the rate of increase in a post’s salary level that is galling, not the salary itself.
    It is important to remember that they do not, as in the private sector, have any responsibility for ‘growing the business’ which is what private CEOs get the moolah for (or, at least, should, although even that is up for some argument in some of the huge corporations)
    Also, please let’s not forget the massively generous pensions that these guys receive; far higher than the majority in the private sector and an issue that used to be important when deciding salaries.
    If, as most apologists for the senior civil servants now say, “they could get much more in the private sector”, perhaps their pension arrangements should be similarly viewed.
    Maybe the salaries of CEs of local Councils could, in some way, be linked to their efficiency on controlling their budgets – no, I don’t know how but then again I’m not on the remuneration committee for any local councils either.
    Phil Stringer

  • Steve Robson

    Pensions are clearly much lower in cash terms because salaries are much lower.
    No-one says salaries should be the same, but they are currently much much lower. For the equivalent size organisations they are probably a tenth of the salary. In some parts of the private sector, CEO’s earn tens of millions pa. The CEO of Goldman Sachs got a £47million bonus last year. I wouldn’t argue that the CEO of Thurrock should earn £2million, but I would certainly argue that s/he should earn much more than £60K as Timmy thinks he should. To say someone should run an organisation turning over £600million pa for £60K is just stupid.
    Also, CEO’s in Local Government get sacked all the time. Often they have not overspent either, there is very little overspending. Yes its not called being sacked and they often get paid off, but so do they too in the private sector and with much bigger pay offs. Its not called being sacked there either. Ian Blair was sacked for example, as were at least five London Chief Execs in the past year. Are you people really so naive that you think all the Chief Executives (and other senior local government officers) who leave and don’t have another job just want to spend more time with their families. Or are you like creationists, who ignore the evidence and continue to make the same case regardless.