Chief exec earns 6.4x the salary of lowest paid council staff
Richard Evans, Local Democracy Reporter
A Welsh council’s chief executive earns more than six times the salary of the council’s lowest paid member of staff, councillors heard.
At a meeting at Denbighshire Council’s Ruthin County Hall HQ this week, councillors rubber-stamped Denbighshire ’s annual pay policy statement, which outlines how much council staff are paid, including senior officers and the lowest-paid employees.
The 2025/26 version included details of the latest national pay awards agreed for 2024/25, while noting that negotiations for the upcoming year were still ongoing.
The policy, required under the Localism Act 2011, must be updated and published each year and confirmed the council’s lowest-paid staff are expected to remain on wages above the Real Living Wage of £12 per hour.
Relationship
The statement compared the salary of the chief executive with that of the council’s lowest-paid worker, referencing national guidance that top earners in the public sector should not receive more than 20 times the lowest salary.
The chief executive position receives an incremental scale of £144,452 – £148,822 per annum for 2024/25, with no agreement on the National Pay Award for 2025/26 being in place yet.
Head of corporate support services Catrin Roberts said Denbighshire’s pay structure was within the limits allowed.
“An important part of the policy is to show the relationship between the remuneration of the chief executive and chief officers pay and all other employees of the council, effectively looking at how much the chief officers earn compared to the other employees,” she said.
“There is some data there that relates to the pay relativity for the council.
“It states that the chief executive’s salary is 6.4 times the salary of the lowest paid employee for the council.
“The average chief officer is 4.4 times the lowest paid employee, and looking at average salary, it states that the chief executive salary is five times the average salary of all council employees, and that the chief officer salary is 3.4 times the average salary of employees.”
Requirement
She added: “The requirement is that no public-sector manager can earn more than 20 times the lowest paid person in that particular organisation. So our figures are well within that limit.”
The council has a turnover of £439 million (£396 million revenue and £43 million capital) and employs around 4,500 staff.
The report states that the current chief executive, Graham Boase, has been in the position since 1 August 2021.
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This is absurd. My highest salary ever was less than £60k. I’m a multi-graduate. I worked reasonably efficiently during my career and achieved modest success. I find the idea that anyone could be that clever/efficient/successful/etc to justify a salary of even five times that stretches my credulity beyond belief. Such people are receiving rent – unearned income for just sitting in their post. The private sector has a lot to answer for in inflating salaries far more than can be justified. We have seen with a number of public and private entities where salaries have rocketed well above what would… Read more »
It is often claimed that the high salaries are needed to attract the ‘top talent’. If indeed this top talent was hired, why have the outcomes been so poor? While shareholder value – apparently the main objective across all businesses – has increased, what other improvements have there been? Look at water again – our streams and rivers polluted with sewage, no new reservoirs, failing infrastructure, excessive costs paid by us for their incompetence! No doubt their junior staff are underpaid, with the likelihood of low pensions ahead. At root is the economic model – neo-liberal capitalism – which only… Read more »
It’s a high profile role with high demands and scrutiny, paying a good salary maximises your chances of getting someone both capable and willing to do it.
Performance is a completely different factor, but the pay isn’t an issue for me.
Swear that some people seem to want council employees to be paid in gruel and work dressed in a hessian sack.