The town hall rich list published by the Taxpayers Alliance shows a 13per cent increase in staff earning more than £100,000.

Research by the Alliance shows that there were 3097 council employees who received total remuneration in excess of £100,000 in 2010-11. There were 2295 top earners in 2011 and 1250 in 2010.

Research also reveled that here were 1,146 council employees whose total remuneration was between £90,000 and £99,999 excluding pension contributions. Taking the minimum employer contribution level on the Local Government Pension Scheme of 14 per cent, an employee receiving a salary of £90,000 would receive a minimum pension contribution of £12,600, and therefore a total remuneration in excess of £100,000. This means that the total of 3,097 is likely to be an underestimate.

In 2010-11 there were 52 council employees who received remuneration over £250,000, up from 45 in 2009-10. There were also 658 council employees in 2010-11 who received remuneration between £150,000 and £249,999, up from 575 in 2009-10.
The average remuneration increase for staff in the Town Hall Rich List from 2009-10 to 2010-11 was 26.85 per cent. But this would have been driven by a number of employees receiving large redundancy payments in 2010-11. To account for this, a more accurate picture would be the median average increase, which is 1.83 per cent.

Barnet council topped the league table with 47 employees in receipt of remuneration over £100,000 in 2010-11. There were a further 34 councils with at least 20 employees receiving more than £100,000 in 2010-11.

Councils with the top earners were Glasgow City paying £450,628 and Hammersmith and Fulham paying £281,666.

The Local Government Association responding to the TaxPayers’ Alliance report said: “Councils are committed to providing value for money to taxpayers which is why they have cut £1.4 billion from the local government paybill in the past year, with 90 per cent of local authorities slashing senior management costs in the process. In creating a leaner, more efficient sector, councils have reduced significantly the number of senior staff and middle managers. This has led to a small spike in one-off redundancy payments which is mostly responsible for the increase in the number of officers receiving more than £100,000 in 2010/11.”