Benjamin Elks is the Grassroots Development Manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
The local elections are now behind us and thousands of new councillors will be taking up their seats in town halls across the country. With dozens of councils now under new leadership, the voting public will have high expectations of their new local political masters. The challenges facing councils are obviously many and great. For years local authorities have had more responsibilities foisted on them from central government. Rarely, if ever, has sufficient funding followed, putting substantial pressure on council budgets. The result has been cuts to core services, consistent tax rises, six councils effectively declaring bankruptcy since 2020, and culminating in the largest increase to council tax since 2003-04.
But new councillors and administrations aren’t simply thrown in and expected to sink or swim. To support them are a whole host of senior officers who are tasked with bringing the new leadership up to speed, providing advice to members, and enacting the agenda on which they were elected. The top priority for many will surely be getting a grip on the books, establishing how much of their budgets they actually have control over, and, hopefully, finding ways to bring down the council tax burden.
With such a challenging environment, the findings of the TPA’s 20th Town Hall Rich List should be essential reading for any new leader wanting an insight to the inner workings of their council.
According to the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s latest Town Hall Rich List, there were a record 4,733 council employees who received at least £100,000 in total remuneration in 2024-25, up 827 on the year before. That’s an extraordinary increase of 21 per cent in a single year. Breaking that number down, we find 1,255 getting more than £150,000 (up 14.9 per cent) and 366 who took home at least £200,000 (up 39.7 per cent), both new records.
These bumper pay deals can be found right across the country. From the £457,500 mystery employee of Staffordshire to the 92 employees who got at least £100,000 in Westminster. In South Cambridgeshire where the council has notoriously moved to a four-day week, the chief executive was sitting pretty on £172,479. In bankrupt Thurrock, the interim executive director of place got £283,844.
If we look solely at salaries, 320 council staff had higher salary entitlements than the prime minister’s £172,153. Whatever you think of the current occupant of Number 10 (however long he has left), most people will find it hard to understand why someone working at their local council is getting more than he is. Do the chief executives of Barnet or Barnsley really deserve more? Are their responsibilities really greater than those of the highest elected office in the land?
Whenever we release this report, we get two main complaints. Firstly, that it’s unfair to base the findings on total remuneration. For those who don’t know, total remuneration includes salary, bonuses, employer pension contributions, loss of office payments etc. But this number is important to show how much these individuals are costing local taxpayers. Looking at salary alone only tells part of the story. It ignores the £243,885 pension contribution for a Director in Exeter and the £152,824 loss of office payment for the Chief officer (business and digital) at North Lanarkshire. Total remuneration gives a fuller picture of what these individuals cost hard working households.
Secondly, we’re told that because councils are big, complex organisations, these large pay packets are required to attract the best talent and indeed we ought to pay more. It’s certainly not an unreasonable point and one worth diving into a little deeper. The idea of paying more to attract top talent isn’t one we object to. The problem with this though is whether that’s really a solution to the issues in local government. Top talent from the private sector coming into council jobs will want to be able to get things done. They’ll want to shake things up, fire under-performers and bring in their own teams, take control of how money is spent and deliver results. With all the burdensome HR practices, rules, regulations, barriers and hurdles to moving at pace, alongside statutory duties eating ever greater shares of budgets, does any of this sound remotely possible in local government?
Yes, we want to see good people helping provide world class services, but remuneration is only one aspect. It needs political leadership with a determination to do things differently. Leadership that won’t simply accept the status quo and the restrictions that have so gummed up public services for decades. Central government needs to stop forcing more and more statutory duties onto local councils and not allowing them to do things their own way or supplying the required funding.
At the end of this, picking up the tab, are local taxpayers. They struggle under a record tax burden, always seeming to pay more but get less. All the while, those charged with running local services, collecting their bins, and filling the potholes are taking home record amounts that are increasingly hard to justify.
The problems facing local government are enormous and there’s nothing wrong with paying good money for the best people. But if we simply throw more taxpayers’ cash at salaries – and pensions most could only dream of – without wider reform, we’ll end up with more people on more money and services no better off.