Londoners don’t agree on much, but on one subject many of the capital’s residents are united: Amy Lamé, the mayor’s ‘night czar’, is a colossal waste of money. Whether you’re on the left or right, a cyclist or motorist, religious or not, it’s hard to defend her £120,000-a-year salary for ‘ensuring London thrives as a 24 hour city’. But Lamé isn’t the only beneficiary of the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s largesse: more than 1,100 staff working for various public sector organisations in the capital, including City Hall, Transport for London (TfL) and the Metropolitan Police, were paid more than £100,000 last year.
Khan certainly thinks these fat cats are worth it
Under Khan’s watch, sky-high public sector salaries in London are spiralling out of control. And the growth really is rapid. The last time we compiled these figures, in 2020, there were 655 London officials who received over £100,000. This now pales in comparison to today’s numbers, which reveal a 75 per cent increase in just four years. The increase from 655 to 1,146 is mostly accounted for by the growth in numbers in TfL and the Mayor’s Office for Policing, which includes the Met. The former saw numbers grow from 518 to 772; the latter from 80 to 301. Eighteen TfL employees received over £250,000. Khan himself took home £171,587.
The splurging of taxpayers’ cash isn’t just about salaries. As any business owner will tell you, staff cost far more than just what they take home each month. And as a public sector worker knows, there is far more to their income than just top-line pay: bonuses, benefits in kind, compensation for loss of office, and employer pension contributions must also be taken into account. Only through this method do we get to see the true cost to taxpayers of the public sector’s six-figure remuneration.
Jim Crawford, the chief programme officer of Crossrail, had a salary of £306,900 in 2022-23. But he also received a £191,088 golden goodbye, taking his total remuneration to just shy of half-a-million pounds. Howard Smith, the chief operating officer of the Elizabeth Line, took home a salary of £189,750, but also received £71,740 in bonuses and benefits in kind – the most of any of those on the list. In the Mayor’s Office for Policing, two employees received over £300,000, while the top boss at the London Fire Brigade received £265,542.
It’s easy to get lost in the data, but the real question for Londoners is this: are they worth it? The mayoral precept, the bit of council tax on Londoners’ bills that pays for City Hall and its offshoots, has increased by 57 per cent since Sadiq Khan entered office; band D properties are set to pay £471 in 2024-25 (up from £276 in 2016-17). At least part of this cash is being used to expand the top teams across the devolved administration in London.
Khan certainly thinks these fat cats are worth it. A spokesperson for the mayor claimed he makes ‘no apology for offering competitive salaries to attract the experienced staff needed to help him deliver on the issues that matter most to Londoners.’ And, in fairness, many of those taking home six-figure pay packets work on the most important issues for residents in our capital, namely public transport and crime.
Unfortunately, while we’re apparently paying for the best, the results have been dismal. The Met is lurching from crisis to crisis, with the space between blunders seeming to shrink each time. What exactly are those earning six figures in the Mayor’s Office for Policing doing? And many of those who have been caught in delays on the Elizabeth Line might disagree with the cash handed to the likes of Howard Smith.
Londoners might be paying a fortune to public sector workers, but when they look around the capital it can be hard to say that they’re getting value for money.
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