Cash-strapped councils have come under fire for increasing the number of staff earning more than £50,000 a year.
Brighton and Hove City Council, which is trying to find £17 million of savings over the next year, employed 271 people on more than £50,000 salaries – up by 15 staff compared to 2010/11.
Campaigners criticised the local authority for excessive spending.
Employees West Sussex and East Sussex county councils also came in for criticism with hundreds of employees being paid more than £50,000.
East Sussex, with 409 workers on at least that amount, was the sixth highest of any local authority in the country.
Although that figure is eight less than the previous year, the wages bill still totalled £26,167,500.
West Sussex County Council had 279 workers on £50,000 or more at a cost of £17,627,500.
The information came from research undertaken by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
Chief executive Matthew Sinclair, said: “Taxpayers are still paying far too much for bloated bureaucracies that have been established in too many town halls over the last decade.
“Councillors need to insist that their local authority does more |to find savings and cut back on |staff costs that residents cannot afford.”
Redundancy payments
A West Sussex County Council spokesman defended the figures, adding that a number of one-off redundancy payments had pushed many staff over the £50,000 bracket.
He said: “We have reduced many layers of middle management as part of our drive for efficiency savings.
“This in turn has enabled the council to maintain frontline services and inject new money into other services and schemes.”
An East Sussex spokesman said that the figures were now out of date and that currently 360 employees earn £50,000 a year.
Salaries Simon Hughes, the council’s assistant chief executive, said: “The total number of managers who work for the council and in our schools is still a very small percentage out of a total workforce of over 16,000.
“Our policy is to pay salaries to all our staff which are in line with the average salaries paid to those doing similar jobs elsewhere in the public sector in the south east.”
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