"Town Hall fat cats"

RELUCTANT as I am to get drawn into the world of cliches it is often true that the best form of defence is attack.

So it has been with public relations moves from the council to divert attention from the publication by the Taxpayers' Alliance of the latest Town Hall rich list.

The council onslaught has come in the form of an attack on the accuracy of the Alliance's figures which show 11 senior Croydon Council officers earned more than £100,000 a year in 2007/08, the qualifying level to get on the rich list.

The council makes much play of the fact that a couple of names on the Croydon list are completely wrong.

In addition it points out that five directors no longer work for the council.

Not many marks there for the Alliance's accuracy in detail checking then.

But the fact is, despite these mistakes, the wage figures for the posts named are agreed by both sides for the financial year in question.

These figures show finance director Nathan Elvery's salary was £153,715.

Peter Wylie, the then director of children's services, earned £145,143, together with former director of planning Phillip Goodwin.

Hannah Miller, the director of adult services, earned £144,643.

Interestingly Jon Rouse, the council's chief executive, appears, at £142,969, to be earning slightly below his most senior colleagues.

But any fears he may be struggling to make ends meet are dispelled when it is realised he was only in the post for part of the year in question.

His full year's salary is closer to £190,000, I am told.

Looking from the outside, whatever the council says about inaccuracy in the naming of the parts, it is clear many Croydon officers are costing council taxpayers a lot of money, the point presumably of the Taxpayers' Alliance drawing up its list in the first place.

So with perhaps just a hint of doubt about whether the accuracy attack will carry much weight, the council has a second line of defence in its leader Mike Fisher.

Neatly accusing the Taxpayers' Alliance of trying to provoke a public backlash against Town Hall staff, he says councils who want to employ top people to run their complex operations have to pay the market rate.

And what that boils down to is paying the right rates to get the right people with the right talents to ensure taxpayers' money is spent wisely.

That is probably true but it is a sentiment hardly likely to convince a lot of people facing straightforward hardship in the present economic climate.