Town Hall Fat Cats: 320 Council Staff Now Out-Earn the Prime Minister

The Numbers That Should Make You Spit Out Your Tea

If you have ever wondered where your council tax goes, here is a clue: a rather generous chunk of it is landing in the pay packets of council employees who earn more than the person running the entire country.

According to the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) Town Hall Rich List 2026, a staggering 320 local council employees took home more than Sir Keir Starmer's official salary of £172,153 during the 2024-25 financial year. That is up roughly a third from the 238 who managed the same feat the year before.

Let that sink in. The Prime Minister juggles international diplomacy, the economy, and the nation's collective fury about potholes, yet hundreds of council workers are quietly pocketing more than he does.

Record-Breaking Pay in Local Government

The figures do not stop there. A total of 4,733 council employees across the UK now earn more than £100,000 a year. That is an increase of 827 from the previous year and the highest number since the TPA began tracking these figures back in 2007.

Meanwhile, 1,255 individuals earned at least £150,000, up 163 from the year before. The trajectory is clear: six-figure salaries in local government are not the exception any more. They are practically a growth industry.

The reported top earner was an employee at Staffordshire County Council, who allegedly received £457,500 in total remuneration. The TPA has not disclosed a name, role, or detailed pay breakdown for this individual, and the figure has not been independently verified beyond the report itself. It is worth noting, though, that it would not even be the highest council salary in recent memory. The previous year's top spot went to Glasgow City Council's chief executive at £567,317, a figure inflated by pension strain costs ahead of retirement.

"Feathering Their Nests"

John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, pulled no punches in his assessment.

Council bosses are feathering their nests while taxpayers struggle with rising bills.

It is punchy rhetoric, and the kind of line that writes itself for a tabloid front page. But before we collectively sharpen our pitchforks, a bit of context is worth considering.

A Word About the Source

The TPA is a Tufton Street-based lobby group that campaigns for lower taxes and reduced public spending. It is not a neutral body. Its annual Rich List is designed to generate outrage, and it does a remarkably good job of it every single year.

That said, the underlying data is compiled from Freedom of Information requests and council transparency disclosures. In other words, the raw numbers come from official sources, even if the framing is heavily editorialised. You can take issue with the commentary without dismissing the figures themselves.

The Other Side of the Argument

Defenders of high council pay have a point that rarely gets the same airtime. Running a major local authority is genuinely complex. Large councils manage multibillion-pound budgets, oversee thousands of employees, and are responsible for everything from social care and housing to highways and waste collection.

The argument goes like this: if you want competent people leading these organisations, you need to offer salaries that can compete with the private sector. A chief executive running a council with a budget north of £1 billion could command significantly more in the corporate world. Whether you buy that logic depends largely on your priors, but it is not an unreasonable position.

There is also the question of what these figures actually include. Total remuneration packages often encompass pension contributions, severance payments, back-dated pay awards, and other one-off costs that inflate the headline number beyond the base salary. The Staffordshire figure, for instance, could well include elements beyond straightforward take-home pay.

So, Should We Be Angry?

Honestly? A bit of both.

There is a legitimate conversation to be had about pay transparency and accountability in local government. When council tax bills keep climbing and services keep getting cut, residents have every right to scrutinise where the money goes. A 34% year-on-year increase in the number of employees out-earning the PM is, at minimum, worth a raised eyebrow.

At the same time, reducing the debate to "council worker earns more than the PM" is a touch misleading. The Prime Minister's salary is famously modest relative to the role. It has been a handy rhetorical benchmark for decades precisely because it sounds shocking in comparison to almost any well-paid professional. Surgeons, barristers, senior teachers with overtime, experienced GPs: plenty of public sector workers earn in that bracket, and most people do not begrudge them for it.

What Actually Needs to Change

Rather than simply pointing at the big numbers and hoping outrage does the heavy lifting, the more productive question is whether councils are getting value for money from their senior staff. Are well-paid executives delivering better outcomes for residents? Are pay decisions being made transparently, with proper benchmarking? Are exit packages and pension top-ups being used responsibly?

Those are harder questions to answer than "should council workers earn more than the PM?" but they are considerably more useful ones.

The TPA's annual Rich List serves a purpose in keeping this conversation alive. Whether it moves the debate forward or just generates the same predictable cycle of outrage and defensiveness is another matter entirely.

For now, the numbers speak for themselves: 320 council employees earning more than the leader of the country, the highest count of six-figure earners on record, and a trend line that shows no sign of flattening. Whatever your politics, that is worth paying attention to.

Read the original article at source.