Northampton Chronicle & Echo: MP's fury over fat cat council bosses

By Wayne Bontoft

The astranomical salaries of Northamptonshire's fat-cat council chiefs will be raised in the House of Commons.

The Chronicle & Echo revealed the former boss of Northamptonshire County Council, Peter Gould, had topped a national survey of Britain's best paid council workers with his annual salary of £215,000.

In fourth place in the national survey, carried out by the Taxpayers Alliance, was former Northampton Borough Council chief executive Mairi McLean, who took home £205,000 in her final year with the council.

After learning of the massive figures, Northampton North's Labour MP , Sally Keeble, has pledged to raise the matter in the House of Commons.

She said: "I think it's absolutely outrageous that they should be at the top of the pay leagues when both councils are quite far from the top of the performance tables.

"It's just nonsense that they both earned more than the Prime Minister, their jobs don't bear any comparison with running the country.

"I'm certainly going to table a whole lot of questions about it in the House this week."

In all, a total of 10 County Hall staff were named among council workers across the country who earn above £100,000.

But a spokesman for Northamptonshire County Council said six of the 10 staff highlighted no longer worked for the authority and claimed the figures released by the Taxpayers Alliance did not represent the whole picture.

She said: "The Taxpayers Alliance are always keen to highlight what appears to be interesting statistics, but very often they omit some very important context.

"The council is the largest employer in the county and is responsible for services such as schools, children's services, services for older people, the fire service, roads and transport.

"It is inevitable that people with overall responsibility for such services, 9,000 staff – not including those in schools – and a £350million budget are paid a wage to reflect this responsibility."

The current chief executive of Northamptonshire County Council, Katherine Kerswell, earns between £153,670 and £187,776 while the new chief executive of Northampton Borough Council, David Kennedy, earns between £130,000 and £139,999.

Aside from Northampton Borough Council and Northamptonshire County Council, no other councils in the county have staff on more than £100,000.

South Northamptonshire Council failed to release any figures.