Cable: 'Cut top council execs' pay'

Lib Dems are meeting in Bournemouth

Vince Cable has called for all senior officers earning more than £100,000 to be paid less and forced to reapply for their jobs.
In his keynote speech at the Liberal Democrats' annual conference in Bournemouth, the party's Treasury spokesman said that senior managers - rather than frontline staff - should bear the brunt of necessary public spending cuts.

"The coward's way is to sack or squeeze the pay of low paid public sector workers. The correct way is to start at the top: require every non-front line public sector employee on £100,000 or more to reapply for their jobs.

"Those allowed back would take a cut in pay and public sector pension entitlement.

"We've got to stop the gravy train of management consultancy in government; stop questionable government IT projects like that for the NHS and insist that procurement is from the cheapest, open source; and take an axe to the overgrown thickets of quango land."

Mr Cable told the conference he wanted to cut public spending to fund tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes.


Author: David Blackman.

The former councillor Blackman is certainly telling us things since leaving the council. Recent events also bring into contention top officers pay especially when they appear to have other irons in the fire and have proved to be incompetent. The process of promotion in local government is spurious. It is possible to rise to the top by post jumping and also by justifying ranks of personnel for which the chief officer is theoretically in control of. Actually these posts are not strictly necessary but give the top dog an illusory image of indispensability.

It is not the chief administrater who carries out the most demanding posts in many depatments. In social services,for example,it is the social worker reposible for extrememely onerous child care issues.I know this from personal experience having had senior posts and the more lowly hands on responsibilities.

Give me the chiefs post anyday ,it is a doddle compared to headmasters in difficult schools and the teaching staff. However, we know where the cuts take place.