The salary structure for Bristol City Council staff is “flagrantly unfair” and rewards “fat cats”, opposition councillors claim. Tory Cllr Richard Eddy says the authority’s pay policy, which states the highest earning employee’s salary must be no more than 10 times that of the lowest full-time equivalent – a ratio of 10:1 – is misleading because it excludes huge sums paid to interim directors and consultants from the calculations.
As of December 31, 2021, the official pay ratio was 9.36:1, an improvement on the previous year of 9.45:1. That assumes the biggest wage was chief executive and head of paid service Mike Jackson’s, who was on £171,000 in 2021/22.
But as reported last summer, Clean Air Zone communication and engagement director Nicki Beardmore cost taxpayers £218,000 and was one of three contractors paid more than Mr Jackson, according to the council’s latest annual statement of accounts which covers 2020/21. The documents said fees paid in respect of interim staff are the “costs incurred by the council to secure the individuals’ services on this basis and not the amounts these individuals actually received (which will have been lower)”, and the agency personnel do not receive employer’s pension contributions or holiday and sick pay.
Read more: Highest paid Bristol City Council officer cost taxpayers £218K last year
However, Cllr Eddy told a meeting of full council, which approved the annual pay policy on Tuesday, March 15, that revised salary bands for senior officers introduced in 2017 continued to be a “structure for rewarding fat cats without checks and balances” and lacked effective performance assessments. He said: “That remains my judgement and Tory councillors will again not be endorsing the flagrantly unfair pay structure.
“The Labour administration’s pay policy places great emphasis on the claim that top managers receive no more than 10 times the salary of the lowest-paid staff. But this claim is utterly bogus. It completely ignores the inflationary pay of interim directors and managers, who are paid huge sums outside the pay scale of permanent staff.
“So Conservative councillors will be voting against this untruthful policy statement.” Human resources committee chairman and Green Cllr Tim Wye told the meeting: “Efforts have been made to reduce the use of interims.
“While Cllr Eddy makes an entirely reasonable point, and something we should look at as we should only use interims as a last resort, this is outside the scope of the statement which I would recommend to you to support.” He said Bristol had the narrowest ratio for highest-to-lowest earners among the UK’s core cities and that the council’s lowest hourly rate would increase by 40p to £9.90, equal to £19,100 a year for a 37-hour week, from April 1, which is the UK Living Wage.
HR committee members agreed in February to automatically apply national pay bargaining settlements to the chief executive, whose income will go up 1.5 per cent – just over £3,000 – from April 1 to £174,073 a year, although this remains the minimum end of the pay band. Taking both changes into account, this should give a pay ratio of 9.11:1.
But Lib Dem Cllr Sarah Classick told full council: “While we are happy to see the ratio of highest to lowest paid staff decreasing and recognise the real commitment to improving the pay of those at the lowest end of the council’s payroll, like the Tories we have historically called into question the accuracy of the pay policy statement, given the use of payment-for-services consultants and interim positions.
"The pay policy continues to publish overly positive ratios that have been overstated. The continued publishing of historically inaccurate pay ratios is not something we can support and we shall be abstaining.”
Knowle Community Cllr Gary Hopkins said: “We shall also be voting against this. It is a policy that seems to say it’s being fair to all our staff but it is not. We do not look after our frontline staff as we should.” Labour and the Greens voted in favour and the policy was approved by 39-15 votes with three abstentions.
