Council pays more than the PM earns

10:22am Friday 25th July 2008

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A cash-strapped council is paying almost £900 a day for the services of an education expert – more than the Prime Minister earns.

Lorraine O’Reilly has been employed since last October by Brighton and Hove City Council, first as interim director of education and now to work on controversial plans for a new Falmer academy.

Accounts show the council had to spend £37,000 more than former director David Hawker’s salary, which was in the region of £120,000 a year, to pay the Rockpools agency, which provides Ms O’Reilly, for five months’ work.

The annual cost would have totalled £208,000, well above chief executive Alan McCarthy’s £160,000 salary and Gordon Brown’s annual £189,994.

This would have placed Ms O’Reilly among the top town hall earners in the country, although it is not known how much she is being paid by the agency.

Sources close to the council confirmed she was earning in the region of £900 a day.

A council spokesman refused to comment on the sums paid to Rockpools or to Ms O’Reilly.

He said: “We are charged a daily rate by Rockpools that is commercially confidential, as the market for high-level interim officers is very competitive.

“However, we are comfortable that we are paying a competitive rate for the level of experience and skill that she has.

“Lorraine works for us three days a week on the academy. We are clear that this extra resource is appropriate given the council’s commitment to establishing a successful academy at Falmer.”

The council has had to slash hundreds of jobs in the past two years as budgets have tightened. Some 160 council jobs have been axed this year to plug a £7 million hole in the budget, although compulsory redundancies have been avoided.

Alex Knutsen, branch secretary of Unison, said he felt union members, who are struggling on much lower salaries would be angered by the sums involved.

He said: “We can understand that the council would want to get the best but this seems to be more than the council pays for almost anyone else.

“I am not aware we have ever paid a consultant anything like that rate.

“Our members would feel absolutely disgusted if we are paying that rate, especially as a lot of people are on £10,000 to £11,000 a year.

“They would be very angry about that and we need to ask what is being done for that amount of money.”

Councillor Ben Duncan, Green spokesman on education, said: “There are 1,150 council staff earning less than £7 an hour this year and the council should be asking whether it should be spending this money on high salaries or bringing the rest up to a decent wage.”