200 town hall fat cats earn £100k plus

Two hundred council staff in London have salaries in excess of £100,000 a year.

A survey today shows how town hall wages have increased rapidly while council taxpayers continue to be hit with inflationbusting increases in bills.

Tory-run Wandsworth paid 20 employees six-figure sums - the greatest number of any London borough - in the financial year 2005-06. The council is also thought to have the best-paid chief executive in Gerald Jones, who is believed to earn more than £200,000 a year.

By comparison Tony Blair earns £186,429 and Mayor Ken Livingstone £136,677.

Lambeth - officially the capital's worst council - the City of London Corporation and the Greater London Authority each paid 14 staff more than £100,000.

Corin Taylor, head of research at the TaxPayers' Alliance, which released the information, said: "Ordinary Londoners will rightly be outraged to know much of their hard-earned money has gone on fat-cat salaries."

John Ransford, of the Local Government Association, said: "The people who earn these salaries are responsible for multi-million-pound budgets in highly complex organisations."

TOP 10 COUNCIL STAFF SALARIES

PETER GILROY, Chief Executive, Kent: £229,999

GERALD JONES, Chief Executive, Wandsworth: £227,424

DR RICHARD SHAW, Chief Executive, Surrey: £207,843

TIM BYLES, Chief Executive, Norfolk: £204,165

IAN STEWART, Chief Executive, Cambridgeshire: £199,999

CHRIS DUFFIELD, Town Clerk/Chief Exec, City of London: £190,270

DEREK MYERS, Town Clerk/Chief Exec, Kensington and Chelsea: £190,000

GRAHAM BADMAN, Strategic Director of Education and Libraries, Kent: £189,999

CAROLINE TAPSTER, Chief Executive, Hertfordshire: £188,500

MARK HAMMOND, Chief Executive , West Sussex: £188 202