Decoding council salaries and expenses

Argyll and Bute Council’s recently published Remuneration Report -(here is the document and note its interesting file title: RevisedRemunerationReport-2. The details  reveal some curiosities.

Payments to officers

The first is the question why the Head of Strategic Finance, Bruce West, the most senior financial officer, is not an Executive Director? For the council’s head of finance – arguably its single most important post – not to be recognised as such or paid as such, beggars belief.

At Highland Council, The Director of Finance is also Depute Chief Executive and is the second highest paid officer. Bruce West is only the fourth highest paid at Argyll and Bute.

But in Argyll and Bute, guess who the second highest paid officer is? Cleland Sneddon. Yes – that is the man who has cost the council dearly in the expense and in the reputational damage of two successive failed attempts to do the job the Chief Executive, Sally Loudon, brought him here to do – close schools. (He has, though, removed ALL of the social care services available to all but the most immediately urgent cases. Tick. But hey,  he‘s all right.)

Highland Council has also had a pay freeze for the past year – but not Argyll and Bute. In fact the rise in the cost of the most senior officers between 2009-10 and 2010-11 would cover most of the cost savings claimed in the proposed closure of 11 rural primary schools.

Wasn’t the much vaunted staff restructurng programme supposed to save money?

The general listing of the numbers of senior staff paid in each of the salary bands shows one person paid between £210,000 and £214,000 in 2009-10 but absent in 2010-11. This relates to the former Director of Corporate Services, Nigel Stewart, who took a redundancy package in 2009-10 so his total remuneration for that year – which was £231,480 – included his pay-off package. This made him, for that year, the highest paid council officer in Scotland.

The salary band £55,000-£59,999 showed a modest enough number of 9 officers paid at that level in 2009-10. This shot up to 21 for 2010-11 – 12 more staff in that band. We understand that the major part of this suddenly raised number was the fleet of 11 Quality Improvement Officers (QIOs) in the education department sailing seamlessly on passage to a higher salary band.

We assume that annual incremental payments within a salary band are, as is normal, automatically paid. It is, though, also the norm for a change of salary band to require appraisal and approval processes.

While a few QIOs may well earn their keep by the standards obtaining at Argyll and Bute Council, their general inability was a marked feature of the public consultation meetings during the serial school closure processes. Some were not even able to provide either detail or explanation on statements in reports they had written themselves.

In total, the number of staff earning in excess of £50K has jumped from 35 to 53 – and, again, we had thought that the staffing ‘modernisation’ scheme was supposed to be saving money.

Payments to Councillors

These reveal insights into practice at Argyll and Bute Council.

We know that Councillor Dougie Philand was not paid when, then as a member of the Alliance of Independent Councillors, he held the brief for Arts, Culture and Sport. When he resigned oin a point of principle – over the council’s mistreatment of the new – and now proven successful – Board for the Mid Argyll Swimming Pool – he was replaced by Councillor Neil Mackay – who was immediately paid. As a member of the Alliance group, Councillor Mackay’s services were available for this – or any other – brief from the outset,  yet he was not selected for it. Councillor Philand was preferred but not paid.

Then there was the high drama of the council meeting on 25th November 2010, to discuss Cleland Sneddon’s first set of flawed school closure proposals. This day-long meeting saw the SNP group walk out of its coalition with the Alliance in order to fight against the proposals. Immediately, in came the payoffs to reward those who had voted as ordered and to the LibDems who led the way into a new coalition to vote the unable closure proposals through to statutory consultation.

The report admits: ‘In 2010-11 Argyll and Bute Council had 10 senior councillors for the period to 25 November 2010 (the very day) and 12 senior councillors in the period 6 December 2010 to 31 March 2011.

The description ‘senior councillor’ simply means one who has a paid post beyond their basic duties as a councillor. It does not relate at all to length of service or to length of service in an additionally paid position.

There were also internal rejiggings in freeing up remuneration by abolishing the post which Councillor George Freeman had held until 25th November 2010 – Spokesperson for Housing and Communities – and redistributing its responsibilities by adding them to two existing briefs. (Councillor Freeman had, on principle, voted against the closure proposals and was promptly drummed out of the Alliance by a viciously vindictive hunting party effectively licensed by Alliance and Council Leader, Dick Walsh.)

There were two LibDems whose especially unprincipled actions on that day saw them reverse position. They had declared that morning that they would vote against the school closure proposals they admitted were unsound – but by lunchtime and after the departure of the SNP group from power, they leapt into coalition for personal benefit and voted FOR the proposals.

These were two who were then given senior councillor posts, each of which was redefined to include part of Councillor Freeman’s former brief. Each was keen to gain position and salary and neither bothered about the additional responsibilities.

Councillor Rory Colville inherited Councillor John Semple’s brief as Spokesperson for the Third Sector which, with part of Councillor Freeman’s former responsibilities,  became Spokesperson for Communities and the Third Sector.

Councillor Robin Currie inherited a version of Councillor Len Scoullar’s previous Islands brief as, obediently content to see North Bute School close,  Scoullar himself moved up to European Issues and Depute Provost. Councillor Currie also got the other part of Councillor Freeman’s former brief, added to something of a liquorice allsorts portfolio of ‘Rural and Island Affairs, Housing and Gaelic’.

Councillors’ Expenses

A standout item here is the payment for mileage to Councillor Alison Hay – £5,567 – the third highest such payment in the council. Councillor Hay lives a very modest distance form Council HQ at Kilmory and represents Mid Argyll, the area in which Kilmory is located.

Two councillors, Mary Jean Devon and Gordon Chalmers,  who live on the Isle of Mull and represent Oban South and the Isles – which includes the offshore isles of Coll and Tiree – were paid respective totals for mileage and ferry charges of £2,370 and £2,385.

It is therefore hard to understand how Councillor Hay, in the normal course of her duties in Mid Argyll and in attending council meetings at Kilmory, could have racked up almost twice as much.

We are not in any way suggesting that Councillor Hay has claimed for journeys she did not take. We are confident that this is not at all in her character.

What we are suggesting is that these expenses indicate that the Argyll and Bute electorate may be paying for travel costs incurred by Councillor Hay in connection with her political appointment to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), based in Edinburgh.

Mrs Hay is a LibDem appointee to the post of Environment Spokesperson at COSLA, not a council appointee.

We have queried in the past that such charges to the council budget are proper and defensible. COSLA is funded by heavy annual subscriptions from public money – the revenue budgets of Scotland’s 32 local authorities. It also appears to cover substantial amounts of its annual overheads by having them charged and apparently paid without question by local authorities like Argyll and Bute, again from public money.

Yet COSLA does not come under the Freedom of Information Act that applies to public sector organisations. What can be the supportable argument for that? We pay but we cannot discover what they are doing?

We suggest that travel and subsistence costs incurred in fulfilling political appointment duties at COSLA should be paid either by COSLA itself or by the political party making the appointment. There is no acceptable defence for charging such costs to the budget of the local authority from where the councillor in question happens to originate. This is nothing to do with them.

We are also not suggesting that Councillor Hay has initiated charging these costs to her home council. She will simply have been following a path long laid down – a wrong path but not one of her making.

Our concerns in his matter lie  not with anything Councillor Hay has done but with the system that accepts and sanctions such charges.

Under councillors’ expenses, it seems worth noting that Councillor Currie’s are particularly high.. They total£13,418.11 (£3,377.20 for mileage; £3,501.53 for ferry charges; and £6,539.38 for accommodation). These make him the most expensive councillor except for Provost Willam Petrie and Council Leader, Dick Walsh.

Councillor Currie lives on Islay and represents Kintyre and the Islands – which also include Colonsay, Jura and Gigha. His ferry costs and accommodation costs would indicate that he is regularly seen in his island constituencies, is an assiduous attender of mainland meetings,  is always there at the start, never leaves before the end and therefore needs two nights for every mainland meeting – which is not unreasonable in the case of a hard working councillor.

The scandal of the schools built under NPDO

The schedule of payments shown in the council’s accounts for the new schools built under the Non Profit Distribution Organisation (NPDO) scheme demonstrates the fiscal irresponsibility of this council.

• These payments will cost £359million by the time they are paid off. With five schools built by this funding arrangement, it puts the average cost of each at £71.8 million.
• They will cost just under £10million per annum for interest and repayment alone in the five year period between 2015 and 2020.
• By the end of the scheme they are proposing to be spending nearly  £1 million per annum on maintenance of 25 year old buildings.

The buildings replaced through this indefensibly expensive scheme were still serviceable. It is accepted ithrough educational research that school buildings do not affect educational attainment. It is the quality of teaching that makes the difference.

The decision to build new schools by this costly route does not stack up alongside the decision not to maintain Argyll’s roads – which were not serviceable. These are now largely unfit for purpose and will be a serious drain on finances to bring back to standard.

In a council which places its Head of Strategic Finance in fourth place in the ranking and pay stakes, it is to be expected that such corked decision taking is the order of the day.