Should someone doing 3 days a month work get £14,358 per year?

Two vacancies on the soon to be abolished Audit Commission have just been advertised, seeking people willing to do 3 days a month work in return for an annual salary of £14,358.

Audit  CommissionThat generous salary for someone helping to head up a body aimed at ensuring value for money might raise eyebrows at any time, but given that the Audit Commission’s audit practice is due to be moved into private hands in two years time it is particularly generous. Because who is going to be in a prime position to take up very well remunerated roles at the top of a private company in two years time? Those two people who are newly appointed and whose remit will specifically include managing that switch to private ownership. It’s not so much a case of jam today or jam tomorrow as jam today, tomorrow and the day after.

And can you guess the strap line on the Audit Commission’s website? “Protecting the public purse”. If only.

Oh, and who is going to doing the appointing of people on these well paid posts? Ironically, it will be Eric Pickles’s very own Department for Communities and Local Government. His axe should have swung a little further and a little faster on this one.

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26 Comments

  • “Am I missing something?”

    Three days a MONTH.

  • @Ellie: 3 days a month, not a week. So it is actually for about 3/20ths of time…

  • Ellie, even though your figures were wrong, your sentiment was right. £400 per day for such a skilled position is nowhere near the extreme. Just more envy directed at those near the bottom or mean, whilst those at the top carry on just as they always have. LibDems should be ashamed of themselves, having joined with and collaborating with those that are pushing this type of politics. The type of politics that generates envy of those near the bottom or mean, whose life’s aren’t worse than ours. LibDems should be ashamed, but are they?

  • 36 days per year is about £90k pa pro rata assuming you don’t get holiday entitlement. If the job is senior enough to justify this kind of salary then £14k pa is reasonable.

  • John Richardson 10th Sep '10 - 10:07am

    Am I missing something?

    It’s 3 days per month not per week. So the salary is about £96K pro-rated. Still nothing to get outraged about, IMO.

  • Matthew Huntbach 10th Sep '10 - 10:08am

    Yes, it’s nice money, but no more than many others get for fairly routine jobs in finance and auditing. Why is it that we are continuously provided with stories of outrage when people working in the public sector get such pay levels, but we are told it is just envy and jealousy should we complain about people in the private sector earning much more, and that in fact thee high pay levels are required in the private sector to attract talent?

    The fact is that we have no choice but to use the services of the banking sector and all those people in it who earn million plus salaries. So why so much less outrage on public money which of necessity ends up with them than on employees like those advertised here? Is this not all part of a tactic by the wealthy who dominate our society and who control its media to divert attention from themselves and the way they are draining the rest of us dry with their demands that we pay them these huge amounts so they can lead lives of unbelievable luxury and increase the stranglehold they have over us?

    If we are to believe the bankers, then the small amounts of money these Audit Commission people are paid means the job will only attract idiots. If we believe instead that these Audit Commission people are paid too highly, then we should have the courage to stand firm and accuse the bankers of being liars, and to take them and the way they are screwing the rest of us into misery to task – if they are liars, then they do not need all that money to perform well, therefore we could tax them much more, therefore we would not need to be making all those huge spending cuts. To which of these positions do you hold, Mark?

  • toryboysnevergrowup 10th Sep '10 - 10:10am

    Mark does not appear to have got the message the target is now those who are on benefits as a lifestyle choice, rather than all those partners in the major accounting firms who would be taking a pay cut (difficult to believe but true nvertheless) to help out the public sector (although of course their firms will not be looking for any of the Audit Commission’s old work would they).

    I am amazed that we have yet to hear from LIbDem voice on Osborne’s pronouncements of yesterday – are you men or mice?

  • There are enough council leaders earning at a similar rate. Many have fulltime jobs and are on many outside bodies that pay an allowance and they get a five figure sum for doing a very part time job. I was a council leader for 8 years and did the job full time and would have only claimed the full leaders allowance because I was full time

  • Your article is an utter disgrace. Just because Eric Pickles is on an ideological crusade to replace cheap public sector auditors with his expensive mates at Price Waterhouse, etc. it doesn’t mean that LibDems have to join in.

    Losing our independence of mind and scorn for ideology was not part of the coalition deal. Pity that you and a few others seems far too ready to ditch them.

  • In the freelance consulting world £400 a day does not sound ridiculously high for what sounds like it should be a senior role. I have more than a decade’s experience in my field and I’ve freelanced for £250 a day.

    However I would be interested to know whether the postholder would be treated as an employee (getting paid holidays, pension contributions etc) or as a consultant. As a consultant your day rate is higher than an employee doing the same job because you don’t get employee benefits or rights (you can be got rid of very quickly and far more cheaply than an employee)

  • 400 pound a day is at the lower end of what a standard IT contractor would expect to earn. It is not excessive for a senior role in a national organisation. I think we can be certain there will be people getting paid a lot more than that when the audit function is outsourced to the private sector. Is it obligatory these days to have an unreasoning hatred of the public sector in order to be a Lib Dem? Perhaps there’s a clause in the coalition agreement I missed.

  • But Mark the positions are not being advertised as £90,000pa are they? And I think you may find that in the field of auditing and accountancy, that would be considered to be “near the bottom or mean”. That is what I mean by the type of politics being engaged in, its pervasiveness is not confined to the usual channels of envy. Do you really believe that £400 per day for such a senior position is anywhere near excessive? No it is not, but it fits in with the coalition meme to try and portray it as if it is. And the fact that these two positions may command more, once fully in the private sector, is not a good reason to question why we should pay even less than what is being offered, whilst it remains in the public sector. And I could be wrong, but I don’t think many in the public service, will be counting the LibDems as friends. Just as Caroline Lucas would not include you as friends of the Greens.

  • It is an unremarkable salary for a board level position in a national organisation. It is not waste. And you really think people’s pay should be set according to their potential to get a job in the future which they may never even apply for? Utterly bonkers.

  • Mark – there is a big difference between £400 a day for a limited number of days for a limited period and a full time permanent job at £90k. The former has no pension, no sickness, no continuity, etc. £400 is not a commercial rate for a director for an organisation making as big a transition as this. I have been paid more than this on occasion, by both commercial firms and government quangos. Hopefully there will be someone who wants to do the job, and is therefore prepared to accept this pay rate, as it is an important role.

    The Better Regulation Task Force, which wants 2.5 days a month, and is ongoing, pays nothing at all. I am not even sure that they pay expenses. I expect that the only people who do it are those with axes to grind.

  • Never mind the salary level, why are you being a cheerleader for Eric Pickles’ anti-public sector crusade?

  • @Mark Pack

    So do you really believe, that for the positions being offered, the salary is excessive?

  • It’s the wrong question. The right one should be ‘how much do we have to pay to get someone capable of doing this job’.
    I imagine at least one of the people will have been a Partner in one of the big 4 audit firms. They are charged out at least £3 k a day and are paid a minimum somewhere around £300k a year -frequently much higher.

    So this amount of pzy sounds like a bargain to me. Non exec directors in PLCs also get paid much more -without anything like the degree of public scrutiny

  • My nan always used to say that if you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys. As others have pointed out this is probably somewhat less than the rate these people would demand in the private sector, so I imagine that those going for the job may have their eye on honours instead.

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