Council bites back at media bosses on public service pay

OK, so it’s about chief officers, but Fife Council’s leader asks some pertinent questions of the media about its attack on public services. In a letter to the Scotland on Sunday newspaper, he points out that one local paper’s chief executive was paid more than the council’s top eight earners put together!
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/letters/Council-salaries--story-misleading.6218126.jp

After putting Scotland on Sunday right about its figures, the fact that the comparisons were wrong because they did not account for Fife having full responsibility for Fire and Police (instead of joint boards elsewhere), and the £420,000 it had reduced in management costs, council leader Peter Grant launches into the media.

He writes, “Last year, a Fife local newspaper ran a similar story about highly paid council officials in Fife and we discovered that the chief executive of that newspaper group was paid more than the eight highest earners in Fife Council added together, despite the fact that the newspaper had made a loss of about £1 million. It would be interesting to know how much your newspaper is paying its senior executives who carry a fraction of the responsibility of chief officers in local government.”