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Letter - response to Gordon Taylor over spending cuts
Mr Taylor is wrong. All our staff and councillors have had their pay frozen.
The council chief executive will shortly become chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham for no extra pay but half the cost for the Royal Borough as we will share his salary.
Many more management posts will be shared as part of the tri-borough arrangements, saving vast amounts of money while protecting front line services.
However, we believe in democracy at a local level with ward councillors at the centre of the communities they represent.
We will shortly be announcing proposals to shift more power down from the Town Hall.
All in all, with our neighbours, we are at the very forefront of revolutionising local public services.
Yours faithfully.
Councillor Sir Merrick Cockell
Leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
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A few things...
First of all it is Doctor Taylor-not Mr.
Rather as you are Sir Merrick Cockell-not Mr Merrick Cockell.
Then the next question is why use newspaper columns to respond? Surely a courteous, private, reply would have been in order.
But onto the most important point.It does not matter that the £90,000 a year is being shared: what matters is that the private sector salary for the job is £40k a year. That means that RBKC and H&F
are paying double the market rate
Merrick Cockell last year paid himself over £110,000 a year.
And yet still he talks rubbish.....
"However, we believe in democracy at a local level with ward councillors at the centre of the communities they represent."
Conservative councillors have the worst record of holding surgeries. Most are never seen by their residents. Even 2 cllrs per ward is overdoing it. Far too many:far too useless.
"councillors have had their pay frozen"
Why couldnt they have had them cut?
Why are you not protecting front line services, like EPICS by using some of the £170million reserves?
It is good to learn that the Chief Executive of RBKC will now also do the same job at Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Nevertheless his salary of £256,000 is high compared with jobs of similar weight in the private sector. It also suggests that if he now can do this job for two boroughs he has been overpaid and underemployed previously.
This is an example of the pay disparity between the public and the private sector highlighted in a recent Policy Exchange think tank report which showed that public sector salaries were higher than relative jobs in the private sector. Cutting the number of councillors and council employees would improve the low level of efficiency in this area of the public sector compared with the private sector.
Gordon Taylor