By Richard Johnstone
3 May 2011
The number of people employed in local government has fallen sharply over the past two years, with more than 15,000 jobs lost, according to the Local Government Group.
An LGC report, Local government pay and workforce: facts and figures 2010/11, reveals there was a 1.5% decrease in local authority jobs between 2008/09 and 2010/11, taking the total workforce down to almost 1.7 million.
In the same period, overall public sector employment increased by 4.5%.
The report says the pay bill for local government workers, including bonuses and overtime, was £26.4bn in 2010/11. This is an increase of 1.2% over the same two-year period, but a real-terms fall of 5.4% when inflation is taken into account.
Workers in local government had the lowest average earnings in the public sector, the research shows, with 45% of workers paid at less than £18,000 a year and a further 27% between £18,000 and £24,000.
The chair of the Local Government Group’s workforce programme board, Sir Steve Bullock, said the figures showed ‘that far from the common myth of profligate councils paying huge salaries to armies of unnecessary pen-pushers, local authorities have been operating significant pay restraint in the past few years’.
‘Councils knew the cuts to their budgets were coming and did all they could to prepare, taking early action to reduce the size of their workforce and as a result cutting the overall wage bill. This came against a background of overall growth in other areas of the public sector and demonstrates local government’s commitment to providing value for money to council taxpayers,’ he said.
In a separate survey earlier this year, employment researchers Incomes Data Services revealed that chief executives of local authorities in England and Wales received average total earnings of £147,934 in 2009/10.
