Lots more senior staff in Barnet plus some big pay rises

I like to keep an eye on Barnet senior salaries which are published on a monthly basis; you can read them here. The list looked longer than I was expecting so I investigated a bit further.

Last August a number of staff got some very large pay rises so I compared the May 2018 senior salaries list to the same list from December 2017.

A few things that I identified:

• 21 new post (excluding one temporary post covering maternity leave);
• 6 posts removed so a net increase of 15 new posts;
• a net additional cost of  £1.1 million per annum;
• 8 staff received pay rises ranging from a rather modest £1,189 to a very sizeable £12,500 with the majority of rises £8,000 per annum;
• 1 staff member did get promoted to a new role and got a £21,000 pay rise.

With so much talk about cuts to services it does seem rather strange so many new posts have been created and such substantial pay rises have been pushed through. In terms of the new posts I suspect that part of this increase is merely a reflection of the reduction in interim and agency staff whereby interim staff are being taken off agency status and taken on as full time staff due the tightening up of tax rules for the self employed by HMRC.

In terms of the pay rises, last time I raised this with Richard Cornelius he said it was necessary to stop staff from leaving. Maybe the Council should look a little deeper as to why staff want to leave?