Council salaries story misleading

THERE were a number of inaccuracies in last week's report on salaries in Fife Council (News, 21 March). It is disappointing that we were not invited to comment on the figures before they were published as we could easily have provided exactly the same corrections as we did when these same figures were first bandied about several months ago.

As a unitary police authority and a unitary fire authority, Fife Council is responsible for police and fire service salaries, and these have been included in the figures quoted for Fife. In all other parts of Scotland, with the exception of Dumfries and Galloway, there are joint boards for police and fire, and salary costs associated with these functions are not included in the figures for their constituent councils.

The Fife figures are also out of date as we have seen further reductions in senior management posts as part of a continuing process of review of management structures. Our senior management costs have reduced by 420,000 since October 2008. A more accurate and up-to-date figure for Fife, comparable with those for other councils, would be seven posts paid above 100,000.

To put this into context, Fife Council provides round the clock services to 370,000 people, runs over 160 schools and 57 libraries, looks after 52,000 street lights, recycles over 100,000 tonnes of waste (by far the highest in Scotland), provides over a million hours of home care every year and much more besides.

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.

Cllr Peter Grant, Leader of Fife Council