Former Chief: Bryn’s rate of £195,000 a year has been cut for the new chief

A REPORT from the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales (IRPW) has recommended a massive cut in pay for any new Chief Executive at Pembrokeshire County Council.

 Former Chief Executive Bryn Parry Jones’ rate of £195,000 a year, plus extra for his duties as returning officer, will be replaced with a significantly lower but still eyewatering salary of £130K per year.

The council had argued that the replacement salary should be £145,000 a year. The board, whose recommendations must be taken into account by the local authority when setting the pay for a new Chief Executive, have said that Pembrokeshire’s size does not justify paying even the Council’s proposed salary, itself £50,000 lower than that paid to Bryn Parry-Jones.

In relation to Chief Executives, the Panel’s role is limited to taking a view and making a recommendation. Although the Local Authority/ Authorities concerned must have regard to this opinion, they are not obliged to follow it. It is true other legislation will require any such decision to be made through a vote of full council.

It is also the case the decision would be open to scrutiny, not only by the authorities’ internal scrutiny processes, but also by external regulators such as the Wales Audit Office. The authority would need to explain why they did not agree with the Panel’s recommendation, if it set a different salary than that suggested by the Remuneration Panel.

QUESTIONS RAISED ON PAY 

The setting of the Chief Executive’s salary at a level a third lower than Mr Parry-Jones’ raises a number of questions about the way in which his salary and the salary of senior officers has been set. IPPG Leader Jamie Adams, and others within the governing group, have repeatedly claimed that to get the best the authority needs to offer large and attractive wage packages to senior officers. In the past, the same councillors have used IRPW recommendations as a basis for arguing that high pay was justified.

It would be, however, a remarkable situation indeed if the Head of Paid Service had a smaller remuneration package than staff notionally junior to them in the Council hierarchy. From an examination of similar roles in other authorities, The Pembrokeshire Herald has discovered that the salary of those staff at director level – for example, the same as Pembrokeshire’s own Director of Development Dr Steven Jones – are paid between 75% and 80% of a Chief Executive’s salary.

If that was followed through to its logical conclusion, setting the salary of the Chief Executive at £130,000 would produce director level salaries in the region of (at most) £104,000 a year, a pay cut of around one fifth of those directors’ current salary level.

The Pembrokeshire Herald has looked at a number of authorities in England of comparable size to Pembrokeshire and has noticed that salaries for senior officers in Wales appear to be significantly higher than those of comparators across the border. One noticeable factor in the ratio of pay between the lowest paid full-time council employees in England is that Chief Officers’ pay is often pegged to the pay of the authorities’ lowest earners.

In the case of Hertfordshire, for example, this means that the median Chief Officers’ pay of £127,000 is between seven to eight times the pay of the lowest (non-school) members of council staff.

If Pembrokeshire County Council set its pay on such a basis, this would mean that the lowest paid full-time worker at the authority when Mr Parry-Jones was its Head of Paid Service would have been approximately £26,000. Almost 3,000 of Pembrokeshire’s County Council’s 6,129 workforce are paid less than the so-called ‘living wage’ of £7.65 per hour. An hourly rate of £7.65 per hour equates to an annual wage of around £15,000 pa.

if worked on a full-time basis. Paul Miller told us: “The pay of the former Chief Executive was allowed to reach a level completely out of kilter with the lives of the ordinary people Pembrokeshire Council is elected to serve. Future Chief Officer remuneration needs to be much lower and needs to be very clearly related to the pay of rest of staff body.

I’m pleased that the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales has sought to significantly reduce the salary offered to the next Chief Executive. I will, at next weeks meeting, be calling for a much more wide ranging review of senior officer pay in Pembrokeshire.”

‘TIME TO MOVE FORWARD’ 

Bob Kilmister agreed: “On the basis of the evidence I have seen so far, the recommendation from the Remuneration Panel for Wales is in my view is extremely sensible. The Pembrokeshire Alliance said at its launch, ‘We want to see an end to the excessive pay of senior staff.’ It is clear the Remuneration Panel for Wales agree with this conclusion. How successive ruling administrations have allowed such excessive pay over a such a long period of time remains a mystery to me and I am sure most of the residents of Pembrokeshire.”

The issue of the high salary paid to former Chief Executive Bryn Parry-Jones was highlighted by Cllr Jacob Williams: “It would appear from the Panel’s recommendation that Bryn Parry-Jones was overpaid for his role for nigh on twenty years. With several pay rises during that time, there was plenty of scope to bring it back to a reasonable figure but as your readers know, the ruling independent party are easy with other people’s money.

Always have been, always will be.” Cllr David Simpson told The Herald: “I think that the Council should listen to the advice given from the Independent Remuneration Panel. When I was a Cabinet Member, we were told time and again that the Welsh Assembly Government ‘had it in’ for Pembrokeshire because the Independents were the ruling group! Look where this Group mentality thinking has got us.

The attitude that the Independent Group is always right is the reason that Pembrokeshire County Council is the laughing stock of Wales. The arrogance of members of the Independent Group has prevailed for far too long, when Education was put into Special Measures help and assistance offered to us by the Ministerial Board was constantly fought against.

The Chairman of the Ministerial Board, who was himself a retired Judge, could not believe the resistance he met. He once stated to me that whenever he pointed out a problem with the system the Council would retaliated with thirty excuses! It took the Council 12 months to realize that the Board was right and we either worked with them or they would take over the authority. The Panel’s knowledge is far superior to that of lay members of the Council and it’s time for us to put excuses behind us. It is time to move forward.”