MORE than 1,700 town hall officials in Greater Manchester now earn £50,000 or more a year - costing taxpayers over £108m.
The number has rocketed from 68 in 1997 to 1,726 in 2007/08, a new report has revealed.
Critics pointed out the huge increase came at time when thousands of jobs are being axed, and wages slashed in the private sector.
The data was disclosed in a report by the Taxpayers' Alliance (TPA), called Council Spending Uncovered.
Manchester council had the highest number of '£50,000-and-over' earners, with 383. Salford was second with 230, followed by Wigan (220), Tameside (189) and Oldham (185). Stockport had 167, Bury 113, Trafford 111, Bolton 69 and Rochdale 59.
The average wage in the north west is £27,297.
Outstripped
The TPA said the rate of increase in the number of council officials being paid more than £50,000 had far outstripped the growth of the economy as a whole.
Chief executive Matthew Elliott said: "In the private sector thousands of people are losing their jobs, yet councils are better staffed and better paid than ever.
"Councils are ignoring economic reality and recruiting more managers and handing out more pay rises than taxpayers can afford. Council tax bills are cripplingly high and town halls must change to bring the bill down."
Coun Bernard Priest, Manchester council's executive member for finance and human resources, said: "The Taxpayers' Alliance survey has drawn attention to the fact that 383 people at Manchester City Council earn at least £50,000 per year.
"Of that figure, 180 members of staff are head teachers who perform a critical role in the education of our young people in the city.
"The remaining council staff on this salary hold highly responsible positions managing enormous budgets to run services for the people of Manchester.
"We pride ourselves on our efficiency and effectiveness and need to attract staff who can work at a very high level and could earn higher rates of pay in the private sector."
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In Oldham we pay the highest council tax in Greater Manchester for some of the worst services.
Why not start paying managers by results, quality of service and 'customer' satisfaction.
That should bring down the wage bill.
I have been trying for months to get a copy of Manchester City Councillors expenses,but unlike other cities they dont publish them on their website.It seems they dont want us to know what they claim. I have tried everywhere within the council and just get pushed from dept to dept.It must be Top secret.
Isnt this just like a labour government/council? im alright jack ,while other people are just getting by,they are having a good old jolly up on our taes and rates. nothing new here.Its time manchester people woke up to the truth after all these years and smelt the coffee and realised where all the money goes...vote this lot out sirs and all.
"Why not start paying managers by results,"
yes, it certainly worked with the banks.
"vote this lot out sirs and all. "
can we vote on headmasters?
Well the number will increase if unnecessary posts like Director of Town Hall Communications are being created on a regular basis...
And now you know why they all vote for the boss every year????SIR!
We can't possibly need 1700 top officials. But if we do can just one of them be responsible for answering a phone.
sack them and make them re apply for their jobs like they do in the private sector
It's a bit rich when MCC have evaluated people's jobs and the more lowly paid have had thier salaries reduced so a bunch of snout troughers can be given more apparently.
The public sector costs the taxpayer a fortune and we don't even get any bang for our buck. 20 to 30k a year is more like it.
Another problem is that all the top jobs are taken by members of 'high society'. The phrase "it's not what you know it's who you know" should be Britain's motto.
Shrink the public sector, reduce wages, reduce waste, reform the benefits system and then ABOLISH income tax to create more jobs.
can I have a council job?
I have read some tosh in my time but the postings on this issue come from a set of ill-informed bigots!
One refers to all coming from Manchester City Council - it is only one of ten councils across Greater Manchester.
Others do not seem to having any understanding of what the world is really about. It is not just headteachers who for a seconadry schools may be resposnible for a budget of £5-£7 million, employing well in excess of 100 people or primary schools with £600,000 to a million budgets. It also includes some deputies in larger seconadry schools. All of these are semi-independent from the Councils.
In other departments there are managers and section heads employing highly qualified staff such as social workers, planners, lawyers, etc. It is inevitable that these staff will have higher salalries than their teams.
There are soem deaprtmenst where there is competion with the private sector for staff and managers with appropriate experience and skills - the going rate means that to attract staff wages /salaries have to be competitive. Surely the public sector is entitled to have the best staff?
My view is that the previous postings are so out of touch that they need to go back to school!
"The average wage in the north west is £27,297.". Where does this figure come from?, if that was truley the case then there would be a lot more contented people around Manchester!.
At it's height the British Empire managed to scrape by with just over two thousand civil servants, now this. As it's other people money who cares well as its some of mine I do actually, the vast majority of these time servers will retire early with a stress related illness that will be miracuously cured as soon as the first final salary payment drops on the mat so they can get another job. I wonder if the TPA can find out the rate of sickness amongst these human dynamos as I reckon it would be a lot higher than in the private sector where people have to make a profit. Again the silence from the Town Hall bosses is deafening as we are paying for this lot why don't they defend their actions?
Hmm, I make it 0.07% of the residents of Greater Manchester (2.5m) on this salary in the public sector then, including headteachers. Which other jobs could you do where you're responsible for the health/education/finances of so many people?
Perhaps they should all become city bankers instead, and really help society out.
This would have been more informative if the TPA had actually broken the salaries down by sector, instead of a big headline figure, designed to think that all these people work in the Townhalls. I bet that most of these people are headteachers, and how many of the contributers to this site would like to do that job. putting up with parents who's offspring have no moral sense and detest education and the people employed within it, supporting their own parents views. But as one person says lets get rid of all these high earners we don't need them! Close down the schools, look at the people responsible for the current economic climate the Bankers many of these paid themselves over £50k plus large bonuses on the back of a confidence trick. Now we are all paying, but if anyone thinks teachers don't deserve what they get you try it.
"employing highly qualified staff such as social workers, planners, lawyers, etc. It is inevitable that these staff will have higher salalries than their teams."
Thunderer thanks for that joke cheered me up no end. Now can you tell the great unwashed what part of the council either you or the missus is employed by? Those who can do, those that can't teach, those that can do neither get a job with the local council. Keep making great cups of tea and you never know you might be promoted to "Team leader".
Presume they are just cleanerson that rate
Im my experience, head teachers are overpaid figureheads, and the REAL work is done by department leaders and administrative staff.
they're getting as bad as footballers!
while we're all on real wages these lot are slowly upping their wages to justify their positions!
i suggest a full re-hash of the wages paid and let the tax paying public have their say on what they get paid!
after all we pay their wages and we expect them to do their job properly!
which is debatable at the momment!
"Im my experience, head teachers are overpaid figureheads, and the REAL work is done by department leaders and administrative staff.
R Annie, Manchester"
I presume your experience is limited then!!!!
Why is it when an article about pay in the public sector is mentioned, all the people who never made anything of their lives and education come on here and belly ache about those of us who have?
If you want quality people working in our public services, you have to pay them a wage that attracts them. Otherwise you are left with departments run by no-marks who sit and wait for the tea trolley to arrive before they think about doing some work.
Whilst the story is about those at the top of the scale it seems that from the comments, people believe all council employees are overpaid. This is far from the truth. In fact the private sector offers higher salaries for engineers such as myself however there are many benefits in doing the same job within the council such as flexible working, relatively improved job security and competetive pension scheme. All of which are important to me with a young family.
The truth is the council would fail to fill vital positions if it did not try at least to compete with the private sector.
My wage is about seven grand short of the national average.
The thing that galls me is that those on these high wages were not subject to the Job Evaluation process which has seem myself and many colleagues suffer wage cuts.
We are not all incompetant fools and wasting tax payers money. But I guess if your bin hasn't been collected this week you may like to blame every single council worker.
Jay B. We also pay our own wages. I also pay Argos wages as I once bought a pedal bin from them. It was a rubbish, rubbish bin so I asked for the company to re-hash all their wages and let the customers decide what they should be paid.
Of course more people earn a fixed amount when compared to ten years earlier. Has anyone heard of inflation?
If you looked at the number of people earning over £5 per hour I'm sure you would find that this figure has also risen.
There seems to be an attitude that public sector workers shouldn't be well paid but who do people want to run their council of thousands of staff.
Should we have someone with only a GCSE in maths running the finance department and someone with an A-level in law heading up the legal department?
Many people seem to 'know' what happens in the private sector based on what happens at where they work.
I'm all for accountability but let's not slate people just because they are successful.
Well said Ronky.