One of Britain's highest paid council chief executives has demanded her authority spend £122,000 on outside consultants to tell her how to save money.

Andrea Hill, who earns £220,000 a year, has warned workers at Suffolk County Council that the authority needs reorganisation and some of them will be sacked.

Taxpayers in Suffolk will pay three consultancy agencies up to £1,500 a day to tell the council where it can save.

Mrs Hill persuaded the leaders of the Conservative council to break their own rules to get the money without putting the contract out to tender.

According to the minutes of the cabinet meeting on March 30, councillors raised concerns that "the report had a lack of detail and that there was no evidence whether the companies being considered could deliver the required change".

However, the proposal was voted through and Mrs Hill given approval to agree the contracts herself with consultants Scintillate Business Ltd, Fields of Learning, and DNA.

The first two firms appear to be based in Yorkshire and Bedfordshire respectively, but the council minutes do not make clear where DNA is located nor which of several firms with similar names it is.

Scintillate will be paid around £50,000 for 50 days' work but a 10 per cent "contingency budget" - to be used at the programme manager's discretion to cover expenses - could see the cost go to £55,000.

Fields of Learning will get up to £42,000 for two months' work, but less than three weeks will actually be spent in Suffolk - the rest will be office-based "planning".

DNA will be paid around £30,000 for one month's work: which equates to £1,500 a day.

The changes could also see health services, the police and local councils share offices to save money.

In memos circulated to staff, Mrs Hill said the consultants are needed because the council was becoming "unfit for purpose" because council officers were not responding to the needs of residents.

She said: "We have an overly complex and sophisticated organisation that will not be fit for purpose in the new era.

"In particular, inspection, monitoring, performance management, scrutiny, risk and audit have begun to dominate the local government culture to such an extent that our council is now more focused on the regulator than the customer.

"Suffolk's residents expect us to provide the very best value for their council tax."

Mrs Hill called for "a hard-nosed approach" to "harness individual creativity and energy" to reshape the council.

Jeremy Pembroke, Suffolk County Council's leader, said the political leadership of the council was fully behind Mrs Hill's efforts to reform the organisation.

He said: "We have to spend £6.5 million a year on scrutiny, audit, and pleasing the regulators - with that money we could fill in 600,000 potholes."

However, a spokesman for the TaxPayers' Alliance campaign group said: "Spending money on consultants to save money suggests that the chief executive is not very serious about saving taxpayers' cash.

"You would hope that someone paid a lot more than the Prime Minister would have the experience and knowledge to find cost savings.

"There are many businessmen around the country who have had to find similar savings in recent years and managed it without hiring expensive consultants."

In 2008, Mrs Hill was forced to defend her salary and said she was worth it because so few other people were prepared to do the job.

Gordon Brown is paid a salary of £197,689 as Prime Minister.

The highest paid council chief executive is thought to be Joanna Killian, who earns £247,000 a year as head of Essex County Council.

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/media/2010/05/daily-telegraph-220kayear...

DEMONSTRATORS have called for an "end to golden goodbyes" following a controversial decision to fund a council director's early retirement using more than £360,000 of taxpayers' money.

The Taxpayers' Alliance held a rally outside County Hall, in Beverley, to protest at the Tory Cabinet's decision to pump £364,205 into departing director of corporate resources Sue Lockwood's pension fund.

Eighteen months ago councillors were criticised for allowing senior officers, including Ms Lockwood, large backdated pay rises, but said they were to "retain and attract staff".

Tory councillors had been warned that showing up yesterday would be viewed as "utterly disloyal" to council leader Steve Parnaby. Group secretary Felicity Temple said: "To have members of the group so publicly supporting this seems not only disrespectful of our group leader, but also utterly disloyal...

"I do hope anyone contemplating joining this protest march... will think again and not overstep the mark."

Beverley resident Marjorie Shields, 82, retired from nursing in 1996 after more than four decades, to find she was due 69p a week until her husband reached the age of 65.

She said: "I've been fuming ever since I read the first thing about her."

John Robinson, of Paull, said residents were being "betrayed":

"A democracy means everything should be driven by a consensus of people. They make decisions behind closed doors."

Ukip's Euro MP for Yorkshire, Godfrey Bloom, and a local ratepayer, said: "They have been here so long they think they can do what they like. They need booting out."

Independent councillor John Whittle said: "It's just the principle. I find it just wrong, it's as simple as that."

Coun Parnaby, who has defended the payment, has announced a review of the discretionary scheme. He said the scheme formed part of negotiations with unions back in the 1990s over the implementation of "single status" and "job evaluation" which had saved £3m a year over the last decade.

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/media/2010/05/yorkshire-post-protesters...

The Prime Minister's £142,500 pay packet may be larger than average but there are many higher earners in the public sector.

At least 166 council chiefs are on packages worth more than £150,000 a year, with 1,250 council staff on £100,000 or more, according to the TaxPayers' Alliance Town Hall Rich List. 

Meanwhile 4,900 consultant medical staff, 200 senior members of the judiciary, and 90 civil servants are also earning more than £150,000, the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) has found.

In total 25,000 UK public sector workers are earning more than £100,000, the SSRB said.

Senior managers in NHS trusts typically earn £147,500, with the highest-paid chief executive, at Guy's and St Thomas' in London, on £270,000, according to a report by Incomes Data Services (IDS).

The huge salaries handed to NHS chiefs, council bosses and members of quangos have stoked much anger.

While David Cameron and his new Cabinet today agreed to a 5% pay cut, their salaries still put them among the country's top earners.

Mr Cameron will now receive a salary of £142,500, while the other Cabinet ministers will take home salaries of £134,565.

The pay for a junior minister in the Commons will be reduced to £89,435.

At the other end of the public sector pay scale, the minimum starting salary for a nurse in the UK is £20,710.

The lowest rate for:

• a school cleaner is £12,270

• a nursery nurse is £12,781

• a care assistant is £13,433

• a healthcare support worker is £13,944

• an ambulance practitioner is £17,732

• a midwife is £24,831.

A worker on the minimum wage at £5.80 an hour who works eight hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year, will still only take home £12,064.

The average pay in the civil service is £22,100 compared to the national average in the private sector of almost £25,000.

And while 40% of civil servants earn £20,000 or less, 63% earn less than £25,000.

Asked about the level of pay for ministers, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: "Don't forget that these people are not actually getting a pay cut, because they haven't been ministers before.

"Most of them can afford to take a pay cut, unlike home care workers, teaching assistants, school dinner ladies and the hundreds of thousands of local government workers who have had their pay frozen this year."

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/media/2010/05/gibraltar-chronicle-many-...