Are Sandwell Council Lying About Senior Officers' Pay?

"There are only seven people at Sandwell Council earning over £100,000 per annum." So said the Sandwell C-S's - aka The Express and Star  - yesterday. Presumably this information was fed to them by Sandwell Council and, as ever, they simply accepted this as gospel truth and spewed it out as fact.

I immediately speculated on Twitter yesterday that this MUST be false and that  Labour Sandwell Council were fiddling the figures to refer to salary only and deliberately ignoring other payments - particularly pension contributions. (Incidentally, Labour Sandwell has recently introduced a "salary sacrifice scheme" for its employees and such schemes are generally more advantageous to higher-rate taxpayers - I will be doing a FoI Request about this to see how many of the Sandwell "Magic Circle" have signed-up).

The figures that follow are slightly historic in that they are from the audited accounts of Sandwell Council for the year ended 31st March, 2014:

TOTAL REMUNERATION INCLUDING PENSION CONTRIBUTIONS:

Chief Executive                  £164,519

Dep Chief Exec                 £142,626

Dr Legal & Gov                £128,138  (Hooray - a pay rise for Neeraj up from £124,251!)

Dr Strategic Resources      £132,512

Dr Imp & Efficiency          £120,092

Dr Adult Social Care         £104,789

Dr Regen & Economy       £108,614

Well there is 7 for a start-off so what is this?:

Dr Street Scene                £108,614

Dr Homes & Comms        £108,614

Dr Neighbourhoods          £108,614

Public Health                    £179,197  (Dr Middleton retired 31/03/14 - cost of replacement?)

But wait, there is more! 

The Director of Learning and Culture was not in post for the whole year but KMPG, the auditors, say "the annualised salary is £101,687".

The Director of Children & Families is also said to have departed in April, 2013 but KMPG refer to an annualised salary of £101,687 for this post. It is also said that the statutory role of Director of Children's Services has been outsourced to a private company. That's been cheap, I'll bet!

But there is more! Under KMPG's list of "Other Employees", ie those outside the "Magic Circle":

Band 100,000 - 104,999   - one employee - schools

Band 115,000 - 144,999   - one employee - schools

And so the question is simply this - have some of these very highly-paid employees left SMBC between 31st March and yesterday or did Labour Sandwell Council lie to the Express and Star? Tell us Express and Star who gave you this information and why you didn't bother to check it?

(Apologies that my tables seem to have gone "wonky" between draft and finished product!)

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