Council job that pays £132,000 to be filled

CARDIFF council is looking for a new director – and the job is the second best paid at the authority.

The council will soon be advertising for the post of corporate director of resources (section 151 officer), with a salary of £132,613 per year.

Christine Salter, the current holder of the post, is retiring and leaving the council in September.

The corporate director of resources comes second in the council’s pay scale only to the chief executive, Paul Orders, who takes home £173,417 a year.

Prime Minister Theresa May, by comparison, earns about £150,000 per year.

Councillors voted to readvertise the role with the same terms.

The Liberal Democrats had put forward a separate vote on the salary of the post. If councillors voted against the recommended salary, the chief executive would have been tasked with resetting it. But only nine councillors voted against setting the salary at £132,613, while eight abstained.

Councillor Joe Boyle, leader of the Liberal Democrats on the council, said since the last administration began re-shaping senior management six years ago, his group has been consistent in opposing the current pay structures.

Ahead of last week’s vote, he said: “The proposed salary which we are voting on today is little short of that paid to the Prime Minister and while I think you could argue the current section 151 officer is considerably more competent at her role than the current Prime Minister is at hers, the principle to which we have adhered throughout remains, and is why we backed the Tory reference back when we considered senior structures in the autumn.

“If council as a whole agrees with us and our opposition to this level of salary we would be tasking the chief executive with setting the salary at a level that we believe would be more acceptable to residents in Cardiff who have faced pay restraint for a long decade.”

Councillor Chris Weaver said the recommended salary went through a crossparty employment conditions committee last autumn, and he would be recommending a like-for-like replacement as set out in the chief executive’s report.

He said Ms Salter is a “long-serving officer with supreme experience” and council will “absolutely seek to retain that knowledge”.