Brighton and Hove City Council pays senior official almost £200k

Brighton and Hove City Council paid one of its senior officials almost £200,000 last year.

David Murray, the former strategic director for communities, received £195,608 although he left in October, six months into – or half way through – the financial year.

The total included a payoff of £125,000, equivalent to a year’s salary, after Mr Murray took redundancy. He also received £62,500 pay for working for the first six months of the year and £8,108 in pension contributions.

Mr Murray, who worked for the council for two years, took up a post at Brent Council in London in May as interim policy and partnerships adviser.

His £125,000 payoff, which included pay in lieu of notice, was one of 207 “exit packages” agreed by the council in the 2012-13 financial year totalling almost £1.6 million.

The council has already committed to severance packages totalling about £1.8 million for 104 staff in the current financial year.

In its statement of accounts the council set out the pay of senior executives including £83,371 to departing chief executive John Barradell, who left in September last year. Mr Barradell was paid £70,833 plus £12,538 in pension contributions.

The new chief executive Penny Thompson, who started last December, had been paid a total of £78,168 by the end of March. This included pay of £57,917, expense allowances of £10,000 and £10,251 in pension contributions.

Eight senior staff, including Mr Murray, received pay of more than £100,000. In three cases, this included £15,000 in pension contributions. A further ten senior staff were paid more than £85,000 excluding pension contributions.

The figures, published for the council’s Audit and Standards Committee, exclude the interim director of children’s services Heather Tomlinson. She worked for the council as a consultant from last autumn until July. She was reported to have been paid £1,000 a day in a previous consultancy role.

More than 250 managers and senior staff had a basic salary of more than £50,000 in the financial year to the end of March, according to the statement of accounts.