Six-figure salaries have been approved for top Kirklees Council bosses, with the local authority forking out over £2m on its senior staff last year.

At last week’s full council meeting, the council’s Pay Policy was approved for the current financial year. This sets out the wages of council staff, primarily dealing with the salaries of Chief Officers.

This came just two days before an email was sent by Chief Executive Jacqui Gedman to council staff, informing them that the council was looking to make up to 750 members of its workforce redundant.

The email set out the council’s dire financial situation, with the local authority facing a £47m black hole in its budget and needing to make dramatic savings to balance its books.

The Chief Executive sits at the top of the council hierarchy and has an annual salary of £187,087 for this year.

However, Ms Gedman announced her plans to retire from the local authority earlier this year, with her successor expected to be in post by the end of 2023.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus: Huddersfield Town HallHuddersfield Town Hall (Image: Google)The Pay Policy document explains that Ms Gedman’s wage is 7.23 (7.23:1) times more than the median wage of £25,878 across council staff (excluding schools or other external organisations). This ratio is referred to as the ‘pay multiple.’

While the document explains that the council does not have a policy on maintaining a specific pay multiple, it says “the authority is conscious of the need to ensure that the salary of the highest paid employee is not excessive and is consistent with the needs of the authority as expressed in this policy statement and its wider pay policy and approach.”

It continues: “The authority’s approach to the payment of other staff is to pay that which the authority needs to pay to recruit and retain staff with the skills, knowledge, experience, abilities, and qualities needed for the post in question at the relevant time…”

The lowest wage of any council employee is £10.50 per hour in line with the national minimum wage.

Going forward, recruitment to any new posts that should arise with salaries of over £100k will be considered by full council.

According to the council’s Senior Salaries document for last year, 17 members of council staff had a salary in excess of £100k in 2022.

This saw the council fork out over £2m to cover the wages of the Chief Executive, five Strategic Directors, and 11 Service Directors.

The Chief Executive’s salary was £185,162 last year.

The next highest earners were three Strategic Directors with £137,935 each and two Strategic Directors earning £128,441.

Kirklees Council was approached for comment.