A former director at cash-strapped Birmingham City Council has been named as the most well paid official in the West Midlands - after picking up a whopping £414,000 in one year.
Sharon Lea, who was responsible for bins, street cleaning, housing and neighbourhoods, was paid the astonishing sum during 2015-16.
She appears on the ‘Town Hall Rich List’ published by the Taxpayers Alliance today - as the country's sixth highest paid council official that year. Three Sunderland officials earned more.
Figures show Ms Lea earned just £50,000 from three months’ work in her final year. She retired from her £150,000 a year job in July 2015 after years with the council.
The remainder of her pay was £363,000 in pension contributions - details of which appeared in the council’s final accounts.
Cuts have reportedly seen the council slash its headcount since 2008 from around 24,000 to 12,500, with that figure set to fall as low as 8,000 by 2020. It is claimed by that point the council will have made £800million worth of cuts since 2010.
Yet the new figures show Birmingham, which is Europe’s largest local authority with a total budget of about £3 billion, paid 23 officials more than £100,000 a year.
Chief executive Mark Rogers, who left the council two months ago, received £209,643 in 2015/16 - made up of his £182,500 salary, £23,543 pension contributions and £3,600 expense allowances.
A Birmingham City Council spokeswoman said: "These figures from the TaxPayers' Alliance are misleading and simply provide raw data without any context.
"The director who retired from the council on 31 July 2015 did so as part of a restructure to reduce overall senior management costs in the long term.
"Therefore, the figure of £414,100 was not a salary, but comprised the £50,310 for the four months worked at the council in 2015/16 and £363,790 pension contributions associated with the retirement after 40 years' service.
"This information is all publicly available in the council's accounts for 2015/16, published on the council's website last year."
But John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance , said: “Disappointingly, many local authorities are now responding to financial reality through further tax rises and reducing services rather than scaling back top pay.
“There are talented people in the public sector who are trying to deliver more for less, but the sheer scale of these packages raise serious questions about efficiency and priorities.”
Cllr Claire Kober of the Local Government Association, which represents councils across the UK, defended the pay of town hall top officials, given the range of services they are responsible for.
She said: “Councils are large, complex organisations with sizeable budgets and responsibility for delivering more than 700 services, including caring for the elderly and vulnerable and protecting children. It is important that the right people with the right skills and experience are retained to deliver this work.
“Local government is committed to providing value for money to taxpayers and, nationally, incoming chief executives are being paid lower salaries than their predecessors’ and average chief executive salaries continue to decline year-on-year.”
