More than £100k each in pay for Leeds City Council ‘rich list’

The 2012-13 Town Hall Rich List identified at least 107 staff - including 13 employed at Leeds Council - who received total remuneration in excess of the six-figure mark, a 10 per cent drop on the previous year’s figure of 117.

But 93 councils nationally had increased the number of staff paid in excess of £100,000, including Bradford, which had gone up from eight to nine.

Leeds Council’s top earner is chief executive Tom Riordan, whose salary including pension was £202,127. His deputy Alan Gay’s total renumeration was £155,388.

Hull Council, which is making £48m cuts in the next two years, spent more than £2m on 15 officials on a total renumeration of over £100,000, the highest in the region.

The biggest renumeration package in Yorkshire was to former chief executive Nicola Yates, who received a pay-off of £242,677 when she left her £160,000-a-year post at the council in 2012.

When pension contributions and other payments are added, her total remuneration for 2012/13 was just under £300,000.

Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the alliance, said it was “good news” the figure was falling but suggested it might only be because many authorities had finished paying “eye-watering” redundancy bills.

He added: “Taxpayers expect their council to be filling potholes, not pay packets. Many rank-and-file staff in local councils will be equally appalled - at a time when councils across the country are freezing pay, it appears the money they’re saving is being used to line the pockets of town hall tycoons.”

Wakefield employed six people on over £100,000, down one from the previous year, while Kirklees continued to employ seven.

Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said: “While it shows the cost of senior town hall pay is falling, there is still far more that local authorities can do to cut costs through consolidation of back offices, sharing services and greater transparency.”

A spokesman for Leeds Council, which is making £48m cuts in the coming year, said the council is committed to reviewing and reducing the number of senior managers it employs.

He added: “In the period from 2010 to May 2014 numbers of senior managers has fallen by nearly 25 per cent.”