Next chief has his pay cut by a third

THE boss of High Street retailer Next had his pay cut by more than a third following a year in which he admitted the store had made a series of errors.

Chief executive Lord Wolfson, 50, earned 36pc less, taking home £1.15m compared to £1.8m the year before.

His base salary was slightly higher at £773,000, but he did not get share awards that boosted his earnings by £ 595,000 in 2016/17. Wolfson has described 2017 as the company’s toughest 12 months in the past 25 years.

Next posted a second consecutive fall in annual profits in March, by 8.1pc, to £726m.

Retailers have been hammered by online shopping and lower spending. Wolfson said: ‘A difficult clothing market coincided with self-inflicted product ranging errors and omissions. The business has had to manage the costs, systems requirements and opportunities of an accelerating structural shift in spending from retail stores to online.’

Yesterday, the remuneration committee said: ‘The committee’s objective is to make sure remuneration paid to senior executives is directly linked to the company’s annual and longterm performance.’

Wolfson’s pay has fallen considerably – two years ago he made £4.8m. He became the youngestever chief executive of a FTSE 100 firm aged just 33. His father David Wolfson had also chaired the same firm.

His wife Eleanor, 39, with whom he has a son, was formerly the chancellor’s economic adviser. They have a 17th century country pile near Milton Keynes and a townhouse in Primrose Hill, London, which he purchased before his wedding in 2012.