Council boss pay to be reviewed

North Devon Council is to seek advice on pay after learning that the top job at the authority is the lowest paid of all eight district council chief executives roles in the county.

Chief executive of North Devon Council Ken Miles is paid £97,664 a year, while his equivalent in East Devon earned £130,000 last year.

The Local Government Association is being asked to review salaries of the chief executive and other key officers such as the deputy chief executive, finance officer and monitoring officer in a bid to bring North Devon Council in line with other authorities.

Recommendations from the LGA will be discussed by the council’s governance committee at a future date. Any changes to the pay package will need approval by the full council.

At present, no additional payments, such as performance bonuses, are made to senior officers and the chief executive is on a ‘spot salary’ with no scope for progression through a pay scale.

Leader of the council Ian Roome said spot salaries provide no incentive to do better.

He added: “Other councils in Devon are offering more than we are at the moment, and in other parts of the country it can be up to £145,000. We need to make this role competitive and attract the best candidates we can if or when the role becomes vacant in the future.”

North Devon figures also show that the difference between the boss’s pay and that of the lowest paid employee is decreasing. In 2024 Mr Miles is paid 4.45 times the salary of the lowest paid employee, in 2023 it was 4.78 and in 2022 it was 5.07. In West Devon the difference in salary is 6.24 times.

According to the TaxPayers Alliance, a free-market pressure group which campaigns for tax cuts, 2,759 council bosses received six figure salaries in 2022, with 721 getting more than £150,000 in total renumeration, including pensions and other bonuses.

Over 600 were paid more than the prime minister’s £156,000 salary in that financial year. The highest was Guildford council which paid its managing director £607,000.

Exeter City Council paid its chief executive £120,000, in Teignbridge it was just over £119,000, Mid Devon £114,000, Torridge £101,000 and in South Hams and West Devon, where they share a chief executive, the salary was £100,000 in that year.

The top jobs at Devon County Council and the unitary councils of Plymouth and Torbay attract between £150,000 and £163,000 per year.