Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: It’s time to crack down on council fat cats

Theresa May’s £150,000 pay packet is dwarfed by that of many council employees up and down the country. Nearly 600 council staff now earn more money than the Prime Minister each year, and a report from the Taxpayers Alliance reveals that thousands of local authority employees earn six-figure sums. With many councils talking up fears about funding social care – and upping tax to pay for it – how much longer can these wages be justified?

For many households facing rising council tax bills, the news that 539 council staff earn more than the PM will come as ‘a further gut-wrenching blow’, says the Daily Mail. The paper reports that nearly 2,500 council workers earn £100,000 a year or more – with Southwark alone handing 44 staff six-figure pay packets. ‘How can council leaders’, asks the Mail, ‘justify ANY pay rises for senior bureaucrats?’ The paper says that if bills for council tax payers are going up, all of the cash should go on ‘bolstering threadbare services for the elderly, not lining officials’ pockets’. The Mail concludes its editorial by saying that the incoming head of the Met Police has set an example by taking £40,000 less in salary than her predecessor. ‘What a contrast with the endless grasping of Britain’s town hall fat cats,’ the paper says.

The Sun agrees, pointing to the ‘repugnant’ £625,570 pay packet earned by Sunderland City Council’s chief last year. This ‘greed’ is ‘obscene’ at any time, argues the paper – let alone ‘when the social care system is on its knees’. But the Sun says that this example is far from exceptional, and asks how up and down the country council bosses are getting away with being paid so much. To make matters worse, argues the Sun, many councils have the ‘brass neck’ to ‘whine about being short-changed by Whitehall’.

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