THAT’S VERY CHARITABLE

Charity bosses on vast wages get 5-figure rises Executive paid £300k given £134k raise in a year

‘Eye-watering increases’

EXECUTIVES at some of the country’s best-known charities pocketed fivefigure pay rises last year.

Many now earn significantly more than the Prime Minister’s salary of £150,000.

An audit by the Daily Mail found at least ten well-known charities – including the RSPCA, Macmillan Cancer Support, Guide Dogs and the Royal National Institute of Blind People – handed their bosses or highest earners pay increases of thousands last year.

The figures come days after it emerged that Simon Cooke, chief executive of the Marie Stopes family planning charity, earned £434,000 last year, including bonuses – up from £300,532 in 2017. They will add to the growing controversy over the millions donated by the public that end up being paid to officials.

Conservative MP David Davies said: ‘It is extraordinary that charitable organisations and charity bosses are giving themselves bigger pay rises than some people receive in their annual salary.

‘When we put money in a box for a good cause, it is without realising how much of the money is being used to fund the enormous, eye-watering pay rises for bosses of these organisations.’

Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, said: ‘I would like to see at the point of giving, whether that’s in the street or online, every charity clearly display the percentage of every pound which goes to the good cause and what goes to administration.

‘That would empower the giver to select charities that are most efficient at distributing the largest amounts to worthy causes. This would encourage charities to streamline operations.’

Accounts show that in the year to December 2018, the RSPCA’s highest earner took home up to £229,999, a £30,000 rise on the previous year. The charity would not say who this was. Its current chief executive Chris Sherwood, who took up the role in August last year, is on a salary of £150,000.

The wildlife charity WWF UK handed an unnamed employee £60,000 more than its chief executive last year, while increasing its spending on advertising from £700,000 to £13million.

The pay packet – described as a ‘one-off anomaly’ – was between £180,000 and £190,000. The charity’s chief executive Tanya Steele was paid £137,714.

The salary of Lynda Thomas, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, was increased from £180,000 to up to £190,000 last year. The number of staff at the charity on more than £60,000 also increased from 102 to 125 last year.

Since last year, charities have been required to publish how many of their staff earn more than £60,000 a year, as well as disclosing the incomes of their top earners.

Charity Commission chief Helen Stephenson said: ‘The public expect all charities… to demonstrate they are spending every penny wisely. We are now looking closely at senior pay in charities.’

The RSPCA said Mr Sherwood’s salary of £150,000 is ‘at the lower end of the scale in comparison to other similar-sized charities’.

WWF UK said: ‘We recognised that to address the urgent threats facing our world we needed to have significantly greater impact as an organisation and have strengthened our leadership to achieve our ambitious targets.’

Macmillan Cancer Support said Mrs Thomas ‘received the standard 2.5 per cent annual salary increase that all eligible staff were given, in line with inflation’.