Salaries of Bristol City’s Council’s highest paid officers published

The highest paid officer at Bristol City Council last year cost taxpayers a salary rate of more than £250,000, it can be revealed. Annual accounts published this week show that the lucrative wages of several bosses, who were employed on an interim basis, vastly exceeded even the chief executive’s pay.

The authority says the remuneration reflects the roles of top officers leading a billion-pound organisation which runs a city of half a million people and that specialist, temporary appointees are often needed to work on complex and high-level projects.

The highest-paid officers are listed below. However, the council has said interim senior roles are hired through the council’s managed service provider, so the costs cited are those paid to that agency and not to the worker, meaning the amount they received directly will have been lower:

Read more: Broadwalk Shopping Centre redevelopment plans for 850 homes refused

Director of education and skills Reena Bhogal-Welsh: £42,708 for a maximum of two months’ work in February and March this year – which even if that was for the entire period amounts to at least £256,248 pro-rata.
Property service manager Patricia Barry: £257,536 for just over a year in the post between August 2021 and October 2022.
Director of children, families and safer communities Sarah Parker: £121,031 for just over half a year from January to July last year, the annual equivalent of more than £207,000.
Director of adults transformation Juliet Blackburn: £197,593 for up to 12 months from February 2022 to January this year.

While all four of those highest earners were women, it will not make a dent in the council’s gender pay gap because as interims they were not directly employed by the authority so are not included in its figures. Another temporary appointee who was paid more than £150,000 pro-rata, head of financial planning Alan Layton, cost £139,291 over nine months from November 2021 to July 2022 – at least £185,721 for an equivalent 12-month period.

At a meeting of Bristol City Council audit committee on Tuesday, May 30, where the 2022/23 draft statement of accounts were discussed, Cllr Jonathan Hucker (Conservative, Stockwood) said: “On this committee we have highlighted previously that the use of interims is very expensive. Is there any intention in future to actually try to get people on the payroll rather than pay costs to agencies?

“I would hope every effort can be made to put people on the payroll rather than have fees paid to agencies.” The accounts said the amounts disclosed for interim officers, who do not receive regular staff benefits such as holiday, sick pay or employers topping up their pensions, were “the costs incurred by the council to secure the individuals’ services on this basis and not the amounts these individuals actually received (which will have been lower)”.