Gove’s ‘levelling up’ tsars on £144k a year

LEVELLING UP bosses will be paid up to £144,000 – almost six times the average pay in some of the areas they will be hired to help.

Michael Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is recruiting a dozen directors to act as local champions for poorer regions across the UK.

Recruiters are looking for ‘real people, with a profound understanding of their communities, to be involved in the shaping of policy and deliver in their areas’.

The salary for the job ranges from £120,000 to £144,000.

An advertisement on the Civil Service website describes the jobs as ‘an opportunity for exceptional leaders to work collaboratively with local areas and central government to drive new and innovative local policy proposals’.

Applicants must be ‘innovators, collaborators and challengers’, have to ‘live, breathe and champion the places they represent’ and ‘have or rapidly develop a deep understanding of the local context’.

The directors will be put in charge at one or more of 21 locations, including areas where their salaries will outstrip the average wage almost six-fold.

In Sheffield, the average annual salary is £25,187, according to the Office for National Statistics. In Warrington, it is just under £27,000 and in London it is £31,766. John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘These pricey pen-pushers will end up costing the very people they’re trying to help a fortune in taxes.

‘The best way to level up is by allowing families and firms to keep more of their own money and giving them more say over how their taxes are spent. Ministers and officials should instead cut taxes and red tape to allow working taxpayers and their communities to flourish.’

In a 400-page document in February, the Government claimed that its Levelling Up plans would result in the average adult enjoying five more years of healthy life.

Mr Gove – who boasted that the strategy would ‘shift both money and power into the hands of working people’ – announced 12 ‘national missions’ including a renewed focus on education spending in disadvantaged areas, eliminating illiteracy and innumeracy, improving public transport and giving most households access to 5G networks.

A spokesman for the department said: ‘Levelling Up means addressing deep structural challenges over the long term to reduce regional inequalities.’

The spokesman added: ‘Levelling Up Directors will be based in the areas they champion and will play a critical role, working collaboratively with local leaders across all sectors, and with local and central government to drive innovative proposals and outcomes based on a real understanding of the issues and opportunities of the area.’