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A salary survey of local authority chief executives reveals that women are earning more than their men.

Women are earning on average £97,947 while men are earning £93,538, according to the survey by the Municipal Year Book.

There has also been a dramatic rise in the number of women occupying the top jobs over the past decade, says another survey by the Employers Organisation.

The proportion of female CEOs has shot up from 1.3 per cent in 1991 to 13.4 per cent today. One in five chief officers are now women, along with nearly one in four of their deputies, in 1991, only one in 10 chief officers were women. While the rate of increase in the number of female CEOs is tailing off the number of chief officers is rising more sharply, perhaps suggesting that in time we will see the proportion of female CEOs pick up again.

Overall, senior management in local authorities in England and Wales received an average 12 per cent pay rise in the year up to April 2003, according to the Employers Organisation survey. The nationally agreed settlement was 7.6 per cent; the rest is explained by locally negotiated deals with local authorities. 

This comes at a time when average pay increases for non-senior staff in local authorities in the same period was held well below 4 per cent.  

Three out of 10 chief executives now earn more than £100,000 a year and 4 out of 10 chief officers earn in excess of £75,000 a year.  The Municipal Year Book survey, which was based on the responses of 161 CEOs, found considerable variation depending on the type of local authority in question. An average London authority salary worked out at £135,143 while his or her equivalent in Northern Ireland could expect a shade under £72,000. One of the respondents to the MYB survey received £174,000 a year. 

In addition to pay, most CEO's could expect to receive substantial benefits, most prevalent being generous pension and holiday entitlements. Subsidised cars and help with professional association fees is not uncommon. 

A clear majority (63 per cent) of the of the MYB survey believed that their remuneration should not be linked to the councils' performance and only 7 per cent said that it absolutely should be. 

Reasons cited for not linking pay to performance included: 

•  "It should be preferably independently assessed by scale/weight/complexity of the role and local circumstances." 

•  "Difficult to attract people to help turn around 'poor' councils." 

•  "No, that [CPA] measures past performance, not improvement. The hardest task is rescuing a poor performing council. A CEO is accountable to the democratically elected council not a traveling circus of auditors and fellow travelers." 

Although most felt that their salary was probably half what it would be if they worked in the private sector the financial reward was the not the main reason for being in their present post. Half of the respondents were committed to public service while the other half remained open to a job in the private sector  

CEO average pay by type of council, September 2003: 

•  London boroughs: £140,453

•  Shire Counties: £133,631

•  Metropolitan districts:  £119,017

•  Unitaries: £108,163

•  England and Wales: £98,519

•  Shire districts: £81,655  

Municipal Year Book study

Employers Organisation