Town Hall Rich List 2023: Councils with the biggest earners as one employee earns over £600k

The Town Hall Rich List 2023 has been released, a report which documents the wages of employees at local authorities. The report also identifies the employees with the highest wages, or remunerations, in each area.

Pieced together by the Taxpayer’s Alliance, the Town Hall Rich List has been created every year since 2007. In 2023, the TA said that there has been a significant increase in the number of local authorities that failed to publish their annual statement of accounts for 2021-22- this is the year from which the 2023 report has used information from.

This key term remuneration is essentially the wage of someone. It includes but is not limited to salary, employer’s pension, benefits in kind, expenses, bonuses and redundancy payments.

The rich list has revealed the highest remunerated employees at local authorities. A managing director at Guildford council had a reported remuneration of £607,633 in a year.

The 10 local authorities with the most employees receiving remuneration of over £100,000

• Westminster- 50
• Essex- 45
• Haringey- 44
• Islington- 36
• Lambeth- 35
• Greenwich- 35
• Waltham Forest- 35
• Newham- 34
• Hackney- 34
• Hampshire- 33

A spokesperson for the Taxpayers Alliance said: “While Brits were struggling with the cost of living crisis, the number of council staff receiving more than £100,000 stood at 2,759, of which 721 received more than £150,000. Westminster council alone had 50 of these highly-paid employees. Of the ten local authorities with the most employees receiving over £100,000, eight were in London.”

Top paid council employees and which local authority they work for 

• Not disclosed- Guildford Council- £607,633
• Not disclosed- Sunderland City Council- £573,550
• Robert Steenson- North Lanarkshire- £536,530
• Sandy Hopkins- Southampton- £406,403
• P Najsarek- Ealing- £325,047
• Not disclosed- Wyre Forest- £286,230
• D Graham- City of Bristol- £280,634
• Daljit Lally- Northumberland- £279,937
• Not disclosed- Wyre Forest- £279,482
• S Love- Westminster- £276,962

To view the full report, visit the Taxpayers Alliance website.