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Leeds City Council pay bonanza
A Leeds City Council department has 23 bosses that cost taxpayers more than £73,000.
And in the regeneration services department, one in four members of staff is a manager, the YEP can reveal.
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Council staffing figures list a tier of 23 "regeneration senior management posts" costing a total of nearly 1.7m.
Below them is a layer of operational managers which means of 135 regeneration workers in the environment and neighbourhoods directorate, nearly a quarter are managers.
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The staffing structure has been condemned as "obscene and wasteful" by Coun Keith Wakefield, Labour group leader.
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He said many regeneration projects were on hold or had lost funding and support.
He said: "At a time when people are losing their jobs or being asked to take pay cuts, it is obscene and wasteful that so much money should be leaving the public purse just to support these few people on extortionately high salaries.
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"This represents profligate waste of money on the part of a Tory-Lib Dem administration and demonstrates once again their incompetence in keeping track of what is going on under their own roof.
"This money would be better spent improving frontline services such as employing more social workers to protect our vulnerable children, saving day centres for the elderly and providing more grit for our roads."
But the council's ruling Conservative-Lib Dem administration hit back saying there were 26 senior posts, including a director, when Labour controlled the council.
It claimed the 23 posts had already been reduced to 20 and, of those, only seven were responsible for regeneration and they cost 430,000.
It added the total cash sum used by Labour funded a whole range of senior posts, including those who managed area committees, the jobs and skills service, a family intervention project, the council's external funding programmes and key planning and policy responsibilities.
Coun Andrew Carter, council leader, said: "Putting to one side the questionable accuracy of Coun Wakefield's figures, this attack is yet another example of the opposition on Leeds City Council failing to support the city's ambitions.
"This administration has fought tooth and nail to maintain our ambitious regeneration programme during what has been a crippling period of economic downturn."
He said the regeneration service department had delivered schemes worth in excess of 500m.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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