If there’s one thing that seems to grind everyone’s gears it’s people making (what’s perceived to be) too much from the public purse.
BCBC is no exception. When budget time comes around one of the first things the public will put up for the chop is senior pay, number of managers, number of councillors or something along those lines.
The Cabinet is due to discuss a new pay structure for senior management later this week (pdf).
At the moment, the highest paid officer at BCBC is the Chief Executive who earns just under £134,000 a year. Beneath him are 38 other senior officers who earn between £106,000 and £49,000 a year. The current total wage bill for senior management at BCBC is just over £2.5million.
One of the problems is big jumps in salaries between different pay bands, which means salaries offered by BCBC to more junior officers isn’t as competitive as it could be, resulting in recruitment problems – a recent example being auditors (who double check the council’s sums to make sure people are getting value for money, ironically).
To correct this, BCBC is proposing 10 new pay grades from the Chief Executive down to Group Managers.
The maximum and minimum salaries will remain the same, but for those in the middle, there’ll be 8 different pay bands instead of the current 3. BCBC will, therefore, have some flexibility in what starting salary they offer new managers, while they’ll also save money by moving some managers down a pay grade depending on their responsibilities.
If agreed, the new structure will come into force from April 2018 and it’s expected that the total savings will be £500,000 over the next two years.
