Furious taxpayers blast council fat cat who pocketed £607K last year

2023-04-19

EXCLUSIVE ‘It’s a joke, who gets paid that sort of money?’: Furious taxpayers blast Britain’s biggest council fat cat who pocketed £607K last year while families struggle to pay bills amid cost-of-living crunch

James Whiteman, 57, received huge sum after taking voluntary redundancy
Taxpayers demand the council ‘put the money towards something worthwhile’

Furious taxpayers have blasted the council fatcat who pocketed £607,633 last year as families across Britain struggled to pay bills amid the cost-of-living crisis.

James Whiteman, 57, received the huge pay package after taking voluntary redundancy from Guildford Borough Council in Surrey, where he had been managing director, in 2021.

It included a ‘termination payment’ of £154,240, benefits totalling £5,688 and pension contributions of £339,158.

After it emerged that Mr Whiteman topped the list of highest-paid town hall bosses, taxpayers in Guildford are branding his salary a ‘joke’ and demanding the council ‘put the money towards something worthwhile’ such as the town’s ‘dangerous’ potholes.

Council fatcat James Whiteman is seen outside his home in Guildford, Surrey, this afternoon

Mr Whiteman lives in a modest £650,000 three-bedroom home on a smart estate in Guildford

Primary school teacher Gemma Smith, 31, and her electrician husband Andrew, 32, moved to the Surrey commuter town a year ago.

Mother-of-two Mrs Smith told MailOnline: ‘It’s a joke to be honest, who gets paid that sort of money? I’m obviously in the wrong job!

‘I wish the council would put the money towards something worthwhile, some of the pavements in this town are dangerous. They’re cracked and uneven and so are a real trip hazard, especially if you have a baby buggy.

‘There’s also a lot of people struggling financially, we’re in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, so it’s an obscene amount of money to be paying someone to essentially retire.’

Mr Smith added: ‘The roads around here are filled with potholes and the council have done very little to repair them.

‘But they’ve been able to find more than half a million to pay off their outgoing managing director. It’s all right for some!’

Sandra Warder, 81, was born and raised in Guildford and has lived in the town all her life. She said she pays nearly £200-a-month in Council Tax, which is half her monthly pension payment.

The former interior designer said: ‘It annoys me that someone like that got more than £600,000 in one year when I struggle to pay the bills.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance’s annual local government ‘rich list’ found that at least 2,759 town hall staff received more than £100,000 last year

Mr Whiteman describes himself as a singer/songwriter and has recorded tunes on SoundCloud

‘The council tax is really high in Guildford, compared to other places in Britain. I pay £187 monthly. That is on top of nearly £200-a-month I pay in maintenance fees at my block of flats.

‘Yet because I have savings in the bank, I can’t get any help financially. I worked right up until retirement and paid my way.

‘It rankles, therefore, when I see council chiefs earning huge amounts of cash and being given very generous severance packages.’

Artist Faye Campbell, 45, added: ‘I think it’s about time councils stopped paying their senior staff so much cash.

‘It doesn’t seem fair at all when others are struggling. My family is feeling the pinch and we’re probably better off than many so for someone to be given £607,000 in just a year just feels very wrong.

‘I think that money is better off invested into Council services that people rely on.’

The former managing director of the local borough council was paid £607,633 in a single year, making him a top paid town hall boss.

Campaign group TaxPayers’ Alliance compiled a list of highest-paid bosses and discovered that 2,759 council staff were paid six-figure sums.

The group blasted the ‘extremely generous pay and perks, including bonuses and golden goodbyes’ from councils while ‘local people are facing a financial squeeze’.

The father-of-two lives with his family in a modest £650,000 three-bedroom home on a smart estate in Guildford.

Mr Whiteman – pictured with an unknown woman – is Britain’s biggest council fatcat

Music is one of his main passions. He describes himself as a singer/songwriter and has recorded a number of tunes on the SoundCloud app.

On his profile, he says that he started playing guitar when he was 13 years old adding: ‘As with so many of us, career and family became the priority and I stopped writing over a 30 year period. Now I’ve retired, I’ve finally got time to write and record again and I love it!’

During his career as managing director of Guildford Borough Council, Mr Whiteman raked in between £150,000 and £170,000 annually.

He was appointed to the post in 2017 but stepped down in 2021 when the authority merged its administrative centre with that of neighbouring Waverley Borough Council and promoted Tom Horwood as the chief executive of both.

Today, an angry Mr Whiteman returned home from a shopping trip this afternoon with his wife. After parking their Smart car, he declined to comment to MailOnline.

The couple’s son and daughter live away from home, in London and Germany respectively.

A source at Guildford Borough Council confirmed to MailOnline today that the hefty £607,633 severance package was paid to Mr Whiteman by both councils and was such a large sum due to him working for Guildford for more than 30 years.

But taxpayers in Guildford reacted with fury today at news of the huge amount of money Mr Whiteman received.

Primary school teacher Gemma Smith, 31, and her electrician husband Andrew, 32, moved to the Surrey commuter town a year ago.

Mother-of-two Mrs Smith said: ‘It’s a joke to be honest, who gets paid that sort of money? I’m obviously in the wrong job!

Who are Britain’s top five biggest council fatcats and how much money did they get?

James Whiteman is Guildford Borough Council’s well-remunerated former managing director who took voluntary redundancy when a new post of joint chief executive with neighbouring Waverley was created.

His pay package of £607,633 included a ‘termination payment’ of £154,240, benefits totalling £5,688 and pension contributions of £339,158.

The father-of-two lives with his family in a modest £650,000 three-bedroom home on a smart estate in Guildford.

In second place was Fiona Brown – Sunderland’s departing ‘executive director of neighbourhoods’ – who got a total of £573,550

She is now an executive director of Wilmslow-based TSA, an advisory body which lobbies for the ‘increased uptake of digital solutions and technology enabled care into health and social care’.

Ms Brown is also chief care officer for Intelligent Lilli, a firm based in Woking which uses monitoring technology to help vulnerable people live independently and safely within their own home.

Third highest-paid was Robert Steenson, North Lanarkshire’s executive director for enterprise and communities, who received £536,530 including compensation for loss of office.

After nearly six years at the council, in April 2022 he took on a new job as ‘delivery director’ in Scotland for IT software and business services provider Agilisys.

The fourth biggest pay packet went to Sandy Hopkins, who was chief executive of Southampton City Council until last year when the ruling Conservative group decided it wanted a ‘different style of leadership’. She received £406,403 including a £188,239 payoff.

Concerns over the cost of her departure were raised in February last year, with Labour leader Satvir Kaur saying: ‘This unnecessary restructuring is coming at a huge cost to local taxpayers.’

Ms Hopkins now works as a non-executive director for the Parity Trust, which describes itself as providing ‘affordable secured loans and mortgages’.

In fifth was Paul Najsarek, who stepped down as Ealing chief executive in 2021 and is now a social care watchdog. He received a package totalling £325,047 including a £94,859 payoff.

Mr Najsarek, who was also previously chief executive of Harrow and Bolton councils, now works as chief executive for Thrive LDN, an initiative to promote mental health wellbeing.

‘There’s also a lot of people struggling financially, we’re in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, so it’s an obscene amount of money to be paying someone to essentially retire.’

Mr Smith added: ‘The roads around here are filled with potholes and the council have done very little to repair them.

‘But they’ve been able to find more than half a million to pay off their outgoing managing director. It’s all right for some!’

Sandra Warder, 81, was born and raised in Guildford and has lived in the town all her life.

She said she pays nearly £200 a month in council tax, which is half her monthly pension payment.

The former interior designer said: ‘It annoys me that someone like that got more than £600,000 in one year when I struggle to pay the bills.

‘The council tax is really high in Guildford, compared to other places in Britain. I pay £187 monthly. That is on top of nearly £200 a month I pay in maintenance fees at my block of flats.

‘Yet because I have savings in the bank, I can’t get any help financially. I worked right up until retirement and paid my way.

‘It rankles, therefore, when I see council chiefs earning huge amounts of cash and being given very generous severance packages.’

Artist Faye Campbell, 45, added: ‘I think it’s about time councils stopped paying their senior staff so much cash.

‘I think that money is better off invested into Council services that people rely on.’

And a council spokesman said: ‘In the last financial year, we made a one-off payment of £154,000 to the former managing director. The payment was a legal obligation and reflects over 30 years of loyal service to our Borough. This payment was shared equally with Waverley Borough Council in line with our partnership agreement.

‘GBC also paid £339,000 into the Surrey local government pension scheme. The fund supports all members of that scheme. We made the payment from a capital receipt, under the flexible use of capital receipt government scheme, so this has no impact on the services we provide to our residents.

‘The savings achieved as a result of the Joint Management Team across Guildford and Waverley Borough Councils has exceeded the target of £300,000 per year. The new structure is costing the Council £420,000 less than the previous structure.

‘We are confident the collaboration with Waverley Borough Council will create further opportunities for cost savings. This will result in better value for money for residents and help to protect and improve public services.’

It comes after Britain’s biggest council fatcats who have raked in more than £100,000 were unmasked by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

The group’s research revealed that dozens of employees are paid six-figure sums a year in council buildings where desks are empty as staff are still allowed to WFH.

Overall the campaign group’s annual local government ‘rich list’ found that at least 2,759 employees across the UK received total pay packages of more than £100,000 last year.

Of those, 721 received more than £150,000 – including 608 who got more than the £156,163 salary earned by Rishi Sunak in 2021-22.

The bumper paydays enjoyed by council staff included huge gold-plated pension contributions, bonuses, golden goodbyes and expenses on top of generous salaries.

And they were awarded despite town halls insisting they were forced by soaring inflation and demand for services to increase council tax by 5.1 per cent for the new financial year, meaning that the bill for an average Band D property has topped £2,000 for the first time.

The findings will provoke more anger among residents who have been hit with record rises in council tax from local authorities who say they are strapped for cash.

The employee with the highest remuneration was James Whiteman, the managing director at Guildford Borough Council. Second was Fiona Brown – Sunderland’s departing ‘executive director of neighbourhoods’ – who got a total of £573,550. Robert Steenson of North Lanarkshire, Sandy Hopkins of Southampton, Paul Najsarek of Ealing and an unknown corporate director of Wyre Forest were next

A spokesman said: ‘In the last financial year we made a one-off payment of £154,000 to the former managing director.

‘The payment was a legal obligation and reflects over 30 years of loyal service to our borough.

‘This payment was shared equally with Waverley Borough Council in line with our partnership agreement.’

Second, after Mr Whiteman, was Fiona Brown – Sunderland’s departing ‘executive director of neighbourhoods’ – who got a total of £573,550.

A spokesman said: ‘We continue to deliver crucial services during the cost of living crisis, including services to thousands of vulnerable adults and children, and are delivering hundreds of millions of pounds of investment that is making Sunderland a more dynamic, healthy and vibrant city. This work involves major social and legal responsibilities and remuneration to senior and ex-staff, including pensions and benefits where they have left after long service, can reflect this.’

Third highest-paid was Robert Steenson, North Lanarkshire’s executive director for enterprise and communities, who received £536,530 including compensation for loss of office. A spokesman for the council said: ‘As with any employee, the postholder is entitled to their pension payment and redundancy where a role is made redundant.’

The fourth biggest pay packet went to Sandy Hopkins, who was chief executive of Southampton City Council until last year. She received £406,403 including a £188,239 payoff.

Fifth was Paul Najsarek, who stepped down as Ealing chief executive in 2021 with £325,047 including a £94,859 pay-off.

John O’Connell of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, which carried out the audit, said last night: ‘Taxpayers facing record council tax rises want to be sure they are getting value for money from their local authority leadership.

‘Many authorities continue with extremely generous pay and perks, including bonuses and golden goodbyes, while local people are facing a financial squeeze. Town hall bosses must ensure they are delivering value for residents, including getting staff back to their desks or selling off unused offices.’

The campaign group’s annual local government ‘rich list’ found that at least 2,759 town hall staff were on more than £100,000 last year. Of those, 721 received more than £150,000 – including 608 paid more than the £156,163 salary granted to Rishi Sunak in 2021-22.

Donald Graham, director of homes and landlord services at Bristol City Council received £280,634. Daljit Lally, chief executive at Northumberland was next on £279,937, while an undisclosed corporate director at Wyre Forest ranked 9th. Stuart Love, of Westminster, was next, followed by Fran Beasley of Hillingdon and Niall Bolger of Hounslow

The TaxPayers’ Alliance’s surveys of council offices revealed that Westminster had an average occupancy rate of 50 per cent last autumn and 50 employees who were on more than £100,000.

Stoke had the lowest occupancy rate in the country at just 7 per cent – and six staff received more than £100,000.

The local authority to pay out the highest amount in terms of bonuses and performance related pay to a senior employee was Newcastle upon Tyne council, with their director of public health receiving a £36,192 bonus, the Taxpayers’ Alliance revealed.

The figures come despite town hall bosses still allowing many of their staff to work from home.

Dozens are paid more than £100,000 a year in council buildings where half of desks remain empty.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance claimed that, based on the proportion of local authorities failing to disclose details of their highly paid employees, it was ‘reasonable to conclude that the likely total of employees earning over £100,000 would be 3,126 and 818 over £150,000’.

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