Sunday 6 March 2011

No pay cut for Lewisham chief exec

I was interested in the angle taken in this story about Lewisham Council's chief exec Barry Quirk going part-time.

Apparently from 1 July this year he will only be working three days a week; his salary will be 'cut' from £192,387 (yes, that's per year!) to just £115,432 for a flexible three day week.

Cut, you say? Am I the only one with a calculator?

Clearly. So I'll spell it out for you.

Divide £192,387 by five. That's the annual amount (£38,477) he would be paid pro-rata for doing a one-day week. Now multiply it by three.

Hey presto, it's £115,432!

So, to recap; Mr Quirk is not having his salary cut, he is having his hours cut. He is still being paid exactly the same amount pro-rata.

All of which rather begs the question - who's going to do the vital work that Mr Quirk will no longer be able to carry out? For it must surely be vital, given the salary he draws.

Surely Lewisham will be obliged to recruit another part-time chief exec to fill this gaping chasm?

Apparently not, according to the News Shopper (which to be fair offers a rather more sensible interpretation of the facts) he's just going to delegate to the appropriate executive director to offer a corporate response where necessary. Gosh what a shame we couldn't have been making these savings for the last decade or so!

5 comments:

lili said...

and then, when things go pearshaped, it'll be because, in order to make savings which they didn't want to but had to, the chief exec had to cut his hours blah blah blah

sue said...

The chief of Bury council resigned with no severance but he'll take his pension...His salary was £160K with £33K pension contributions... see here

Quirk's deal is interesting in that on first glance, he'll be better off than before. He would've been paying 50% tax giving him £96K take home. Divide that by 5 (days) and multiply by 3 = £57.6K for a 3 day week. But at 40% tax on £115K he'll be taking home £69K for a 3-day week, £12K more.

No doubt it's more complicated than that though, eh?

max said...

Someone's already done that calculation here.

I quote:

"using a council pension calculator he could get as much as £222,000 in cash and a pension of £33,330, which means in year one his income could rise to £370,762. There after his income could be almost £150,000 a year till he fully retires in 2014.

If I've done my sums right that's an aveage of £223,000 over the next 3 years."

shipwright's palace said...

anyone see the guardian ad today for head of Lewisham Housing?

Anonymous said...

Barry Quirk is never in the borough anyway. spends his life in expensive hotels on a speaking circuit!! Just look at his expenses! paying him 3 days a week is 3 days more than this man is worth!