Fired staff paid £8m by building quango
A QUANGO handed millions of pounds of taxpayer money to boost training in the building industry doled out more than £8m in redundancy payments last year.
The little-known Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) paid £ 8.3m to 129 staff who departed in 2016 – an average of £64,400 each.
Seventeen of those who left were handed more than £100,000 each – including four who got ‘exit packages’ of more than £400,000 a head.
The huge pay-offs, revealed in the quango’s annual report and accounts, has raised eyebrows in the industry following a barrage of criticism over the way it is run, with the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) warning that the CITB has ‘lost its way’.
A senior construction industry source said: ‘Rather than wasting millions on redundancies and massive pay-offs, it’s about time the CITB actually used that taxpayer and industry cash to train the young people that the con- struction industry desperately needs.’ The CITB, a registered charity, was set up in 1964 and works with the building industry ‘to encourage training which helps build a safe, professional and fully qualified workforce’.
Its chairman, industry veteran and Tory donor James Wates, is said to be worth £215m by the Sunday Times Rich List.
Last year, the CITB received £51m of taxpayer money to fund apprenticeships and a further £198m from the levy it charges Britain’s biggest construction firms. It paid its 1,314- strong workforce a total of £58.9m – an average of nearly £45,000 each – with former chief executive Adrian Belton, 61, getting close to £290,000.
Father-of-five Belton’s earnings were boosted by a £77,000 windfall ‘in lieu of notice’ after he quit at the end of 2016 having only joined the CITB in early 2014.
As well as lavishing millions on former staff through redundancy packages, the report shows 11,961 working days were lost to sickness at the CITB last year. Brian Berry, chief executive of the FMB, this month said most ‘agree that the CITB had lost its way’ but added: ‘What we now want to see is for the CITB leadership to embrace a culture of change until we’ve reformed the organisation.’
Sarah Beale, who was appointed chief executive this month and was paid close to £140,000 last year as the quango’s chief financial officer, said: ‘Last year we cut staff numbers by 10pc as part of a programme to make CITB more efficient and effective – a move called for and supported by the construction industry.
‘ This reduction of 130 staff resulted in a one-off cost which, due to changes in our pension scheme, will not happen again.
‘While the cost was significant, it was vital that we got on with the job of streamlining CITB to improve value for money for our industry.’
She added: ‘ None of CITB’s running costs are paid by the taxpayer. CITB is funded by a levy on the construction industry and from its products and services. The only government funding CITB receives is to support our apprentices.’