£21m for boss who went from Barnardo’s to building tycoon

THE founder and chairman of housebuilder Berkeley Group earned a whopping £21.5m last year – although this represented a pay cut of nearly £2m.

Tony Pidgley, a former Barnardo’s boy who spent his early years living in a disused railway carriage and set up Berkeley in 1976, earned a basic salary of £850,000 and a bonus of nearly £1.3m last year as well as £49,000 of benefits.

The bulk of his pay came from share options. But his total earnings were down from £23.3m the previous year.

Pidgley, 69, owns nearly 6.5m shares in Berkeley, or 4.73pc of the company. His stake was worth around £165m at last night’s closing price of 2538p (down 2.4pc or 61p). Twice-married Pidgley, who has two children from each wife, left home and school at the age of 15 barely able to read and write, and set up a haulage business that he sold at the age of 20.

Pidgley (pictured) is now worth £270m, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, and lives on a 100-acre estate in Windsor.

Berkeley is one of Britain’s most successful housebuilders although revenues fell 3.4pc to £2bn last year and profits dipped 1.6pc to £530.9m.

Berkeley managing director Rob Perrins, who joined the company in 1994 and took on his current role in 2009, was paid £11m last year compared with £12.4m the previous year.