Work and Money

Tower Hamlets Council has refuted a claim by the Taxpayer’s Alliance that 27 members of staff are paid more than £100,000 a year. The bumper number of high-earners puts the council at the top of the country’s 'Town Hall Rich List.'

A spokesperson for the Council told BBC London: "Tower Hamlets has nine senior officers whose remuneration is over £100,000.00 – not the 27 quoted in the survey."

Figuring it out

The reason behind the disagreement is that the council and the Taxpayer’s Alliance have calculated their figures in different ways.

Only nine council workers are paid a basic salary exceeding £100,000 a year, including the Chief Executive and the Director of Resources.

But on top of this, the council pays an extra 27.3% of each person’s salary to cover "ongoing costs", which brings up the overall remuneration of 18 more workers past the £100,000 a year level.

These "ongoing costs", according to Tower Hamlets Council, include employers’ national insurance contributions and the council's costs of the local government pension scheme.

When is a salary not a salary?

Tower Hamlets Council says that only basic salaries should be considered when comparing wages: "This would be more or less in line with similar sized inner city authorities, looking to recruit high calibre executives in an extremely competitive jobs market."

But the Taxpayer’s Alliance states: "The Freedom of Information requests clearly asked for remuneration and the Town Hall Rich List is based on remuneration." In other words, they say, all councils were judged equally, based on overall remuneration, not basic salaries.

Among the other councils in the Taxpayer’s Alliance’s 'Town Hall Rich List' are Wandsworth, where there are 17 people earn more than £100,000, Lambeth, where there are 14 and Devon, which has 11.

What do you think of council high-earners? Email your thoughts to angela.saini@bbc.co.uk

Your views:

"I live on the Rushmead estate in Tower Hamlets. Our block has not been painted for 20 years, one of the lifts has been out of order for nearly a week. Now I hear that Tower Hamlets has the most employees on any council earning more than 100,000 pounds per year.

"To cap it all they are advertising this week for a new chief executive who will receive 180,000 pounds a year." – Mrs M Brodstein