FIGURES published by Bury Council show 13 bosses at the authority earn more than £100,000 per year.

The council has published its annual pay policy statement which among other information, reveals levels of executive pay.

The document shows that the council’s chief executive, Geoff Little, will be paid somewhere in a range of £182,770 to £189,883 per year for the 2021/22 year.

The next highest paid council worker is the deputy chief executive Lynne Risdale, who over the past 12 months has been paid between £138,388 and £151,087.

A further four Bury Council executive directors, Shelia Durr, who is in charge of children and young people, Donna Ball, for operations, finance boss Sam Evans and Will Blandamer, at the helm for strategic commissioning, earned up to £132,439.

Bury’s executive director of place was within a salary bracket with maximum pay of £117,495 while the directors of public health, housing, regeneration, education and skills and strategic community commissioning, along with the borough’s chief information officer were all paid up to £106,802 per year.

The report also published salary details of a further 29 council officers whose maximum salaries range between £57,460 and £96,235.

In an associated report to councillors, Bury Council said the purpose of pay policy statement was ‘to provide transparency with regard to the council’s approach to setting the remuneration of its employees’.

The report added that the council intended to make savings on executive pay in 2022/23.

It stated: “As part of the ongoing work on transformation the council has committed to review the authority’s chief officer pay structure in 2022/23 with the aim of delivering £200,000 in savings through this work.”

The report also said that the council has been formally accredited by the Real Living Wage Foundation as a real living wage employer.

This means Bury Council’s pay structure has a commitment to payment of the real living wage rate to all employees of of at least £9.90 per hour.

The report gave details of the council’s lowest paid employees, saying that at January 2022, the lowest rate on their pay spines is £17,840 but this rate had been enhanced in order to pay the real living wage making the rate £18,328.

The council’s gender pay gap for 2020-2021 compared with 2019-2020 has reduced.

Women’s mean hourly rate was 3.71 per cent lower than men’s as opposed to 3.73 per cent the previous year.

The mean gender pay gap is defined as the difference between the average hourly rate of pay of male employees and that of female council workers.

The report added that ‘there is still more to be done to reduce the gap further’.

Among measures to be adopted on gender pay improvement was a commitment from the council to ‘review our recruitment advertising and selection processes to encourage women to apply for more senior positions and ensure barriers affecting women are reduced’.