RISE OF TOWN HALL FATCATS
As council tax rises bite, rocketing numbers earn six-figure salaries
HUNDREDS of Scots council bosses are earning more than £100,000 while families struggle with soaring tax bills and cuts to vital services.
Damning new figures yesterday revealed rising numbers of local authority officials are enjoying generous six-figure remuneration packages, despite councils suffering budget black holes.
incredibly, the number of council chiefs in Scotland with salaries over £100,000 rose by more than 12 per cent in a year, from 203 to 228.
Of this, 61 council officials were paid more than £150,000 – on a par with Prime Minister theresa May – with their combined packages totalling more than £8.6million for the year 2015-16.
One former North Lanarkshire Council employee was handed £486,000, which included a £338,000 pay-off.
Last night the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group said many Scots would find the rise in public figures earning large salaries ‘difficult to stomach’ at a time when services are being cut and taxes are increasing.
North Lanarkshire had the highest number of officials earning more than £100,000, with 22. this includes the council’s former executive director of finance and customer services, Alistair Crichton.
Mr Crichton received £123,159 in salary, fees and allowances with an
additional £23,934 in pension contributions. He was also handed a £338,325 golden goodbye when he left the local authority, a sum that was included in his remuneration package.
This is the highest package given to a Scots council official in 2015-16, and the second highest in the UK. Mr Crichton’s package was only topped by Dave Smith, chief executive of Sunderland City Council, who received £625,570.
Scottish Conservative chief whip John Lamont said: ‘Over the years, millions of pounds in public money has been given to those receiving excessive payouts. It’s staggering to see individuals on the public payroll qualifying for insanely large golden goodbyes. People will be hoping they will soon be a thing of the past.’
Yesterday it was revealed the Scottish Government is considering capping the amount public bodies can give staff in ‘golden goodbye’ deals.
The new figures emerged as residents face soaring council tax bills after many local authorities decided to raise charges by up to 3 per cent.
This followed the Scottish Government’s decision to cut council funding by £216million next year, with many councils claiming they will have to look at key services including education to make up the funds.
Those living in properties in council tax bands E to H face further hikes in bills as a result of SNP reforms which will see increases of up to £554 a year for some homeowners.
Glasgow City Council had the second highest number of officials earning more than £100,000 with 17, followed by City of Edinburgh Council, where 15 employees had sixfigure packages.
Fife Council paid more than £100,000 to 13 officials, while in West Lothian the figure was 11 employees.
The remuneration packages include salary, expenses, additional fees, pension contributions and any pay-offs for staff leaving council employment.
Glasgow City Council had the highest number of those earning more than £150,000, with 13 totalling £2,270,771 – including chief executive Annemarie O’Donnell, who received £212,345.
At City of Edinburgh Council, eight officials were paid a total of £1,786,566. In North Lanarkshire, four employees earned packages of more than £150,000 at a total cost to the local authority of £1,510,427. Five other councils – Dumfries and Galloway, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, South Lanarkshire and Shetland – all had two officials who received more than £150,000.
An additional eight authorities, including Aberdeen City, Falkirk and Perth and Kinross, had one employee receiving a six-figure sum.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, which compiled the figures, said: ‘Taxpayers struggling with rising bills will find it very difficult to stomach that the number of people raking in over £100,000 went up by 25 between 2014-15 and 2015-16 in Scotland. When top pay goes up while services are reduced, legitimate questions can be raised about a council’s priorities.’
A spokesman for North Lanarkshire Council said it did not discuss individual cases.
However, he added: ‘Employees being made redundant are entitled to a contractual redundancy payment and to access their pension entitlement in accordance with pension regulations.’
A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: ‘Like every other council, Glasgow proactively publishes a detailed and externally audited account of executive pay every year.’
The spokesman claimed four of those who earned more than £150,000 do not work for the council but for the Scottish Event Campus. However, according to the local authority it is ‘obliged’ to mention them in its group accounts.
‘Very difficult to stomach’
IN Pakistan, Tanveer Ahmed is a hero for his hardline stance on Islam and his passionate hatred of its enemies. Hundreds gathered recently outside his family’s home in Mirpur, in Pakistanadministered Kashmir, for a rally in his honour.
One man in the crowd said: ‘Because of what he did, the whole of Pakistan knows who he is’, while a Pakistani cleric echoed his praise, and the general consensus was that Ahmed was ‘brave’.
A Facebook page has posted a number of Ahmed’s chilling messages, including that ‘the penalty for blasphemers is for their heads to be cut off’.
Disturbing, of course, and not least because Ahmed is a killer: last year he drove 200 miles from his Bradford home to murder Glasgow shop-owner Asad Shah.
The latest sickening development, however, is that Ahmed used a prison phone to call a relative in england, who put audio clips of his hate-filled rants online.
From the sanctuary of his Scottish prison, this monster was able to spread murderous hate thousands of miles away.
A growing number of his supporters see Ahmed as a ‘defender of Islam’ for killing someone they believe disrespected the Prophet Muhammad.
Inmates can only call preapproved numbers, so it was easy for Ahmed to contact his relative and use them as a conduit for his vile messages, helping to build a sick cult in his homeland.
Prison authorities later banned him from making phone calls (though for how long, before he threatens to sue for a breach of his human rights, is difficult to know).
Indeed, the killer can still send letters, as human rights law bans interception of prisoners’ correspondence unless there is reason to suspect criminality – good news for Ahmed’s barbaric acolytes in Pakistan.
Not such good news for the wretched, tormented family of Mr Shah. The extremist who slaughtered a proud, hardworking man has become a heroic figure, lauded for his brutality, by covertly preaching hate from his prison, where he is serving a 27-year sentence for murder.
Police Scotland say they are ‘assessing’ the matter for any criminality.
But the damage is already done and Ahmed has made a mockery of the penal regime, causing further incalculable trauma to his victim’s family.
Within days of these revelations, and with lamentable timing, the prisons watchdog called for inmates to have incell telephones which he believes can help to combat their isolation by facilitating contact with friends and family.
Backlash
David Strang, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, spoke out to back the idea, which had been supported previously by the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), Colin McConnell, before a fierce backlash forced him to drop the proposal.
Keen students of our cushy jails may recall that Mr McConnell has also voiced support for televisions in jail cells to ‘encourage discourse about Coronation Street’ – so that offenders do not have to reflect on their crimes.
Ahmed and every other murderer desperate to torment their victims from the safety of their prison cells will doubtless also warmly applaud the idea of being able to reach out of their prison bed (now with softer pillows following an earlier recommendation from Mr Strang) to terrorise victims by phone.
Other likely advocates of in-cell phones include Imran Shahid, ringleader of a gang of racist thugs who murdered 15-year-old Glasgow schoolboy Kriss Donald in 2004.
He used a smuggled mobile phone to call a newspaper from his jail cell and send pictures.
In the accompanying article, Shahid, who was seen flexing his naked torso in a bodybuilding pose, vowed revenge on his enemies, warning them they would ‘feel my wrath’.
Kriss’s mother Angela told me in 2013 that ‘for him to have the audacity to take a picture of himself was devastating for us’.
At the time, the SPS said ‘people want criminals to disappear but you can’t really do that in a free society’ – a statement that reeked of defeatism and a grotesque disregard for victims’ rights.
The system of approving prisoners’ phone numbers is obviously a nonsense, as Ahmed’s case proves beyond doubt.
Perhaps, in time, prisoners will be issued with their own smartphones, which would at least tackle the black market in smuggled handsets that flourishes in our jails – and why not free tablet devices, too, to help them pass the time?
They could catch up with episodes of Coronation Street while pounding the treadmill in the state-of-the-art prison gym before returning to their cell for a little light gaming on their PlayStations.
As we revealed last week, young criminals have been given access to violent computer games involving assault, murder and highspeed car chases.
Inmates at Polmont Young Offenders Institution, near Falkirk, were bought nine copies of the Grand Theft Auto v game, which includes graphic depiction of torture.
The games were part of a £25,000 package of books, DvDs, CDs and computer games bought by the SPS for the enjoyment of convicted criminals throughout the country. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show the Scottish Prison Service spent more than £3,000 on computer games for inmates at Polmont between 2014-2016.
Well, Mr McConnell did say in 2013 that he wanted to create a ‘golden age’ for inmates which would recognise their ‘human frailties’ and ‘temptations’.
He has studiously avoided calling prisoners ‘criminals’ and talked instead about taking ‘offenders’ on a ‘justice journey’.
One such ‘justice journey’ is to the riverbank: it emerged in 2015 that prisoners were being allowed to enjoy days out fly-fishing – with the idea that it gave them ‘something productive’ to do in their ‘free time’.
Breaches
Another ‘journey’ some prisoners can now make is to a special ATM-style device a short stroll from their cells, where they can get direct access to information that could help them sue over human rights breaches.
It means criminals at HMP Kilmarnock can use an ‘ATM’ to find out about potential breaches of their rights – before using phones to call pre-programmed numbers for lawyers.
The jail at Low Moss in Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, has a special area where inmates can contact the european Court of Human rights.
Staff ‘facilitate contact’ so convicts can prepare taxpayer-funded cases.
Using legal aid, prisoners have wasted millions of pounds of public cash on trivial cases, such as a child rapist who sued his jail because he was ‘bored’ and an inmate who sued over dirty socks.
Prison bosses have made it easier for inmates to terrorise their victims, easier to unwind – and easier to milk the taxpayer over perceived discomforts.
But when will they will make it easier for victims and their families to cope with their unbearable burden?
Their ‘human frailties’, it seems, simply don’t count.