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A public consultation over the Government's devolution agenda has unearthed major concerns over senior council managers' salaries and the reported withdrawal of faith-based funding streams. CLG officials this week published a government response to concerns raised through the department's consultation programme, which called for public feedback on devolution proposals within the coalition agreement. Just like communities secretary, Eric Pickles, who has called for wage restraint at all levels within town halls, the public appear to have become sceptical about senior salaries following the recession. One local resident, for example, commented that the ‘high salaries of heads of councils is quite obscene, compared with the salary of a teacher or nurse'. ‘The level of pay at the highest levels in local government is a concern to some respondents,' the Government's response states. ‘While these decisions should be determined locally, we expect that there must be restraint in council senior pay and councillors' allowances.' One of Mr Pickles' suggested attempts to cap senior pay and improve local accountability – the proposed wider use of executive leaders, combining chief executive and council leader roles within a town hall – also gets a degree of public support. One response calls for the ‘need [for] elected CEOs'. Mr Pickles recently espoused greater use of the executive-leader model when he urged Newham LBC's leader, Sir Robin Wales, not to fill the chief executive's role following the departure of Joe Duckworth. A surprisingly-high number of responses to the CLG's consultation targeted the issue of local faith groups. Many respondents called on ministers to use government cash to directly support more local faith-based projects, and urged Whitehall not to ‘secularise' its funding streams. The Government response praises faith-based groups for their ‘reach' within local communities, and their ‘vital contribution to national life', and ministers will now consider whether to support faith-based funding streams more directly. But one senior Whitehall source said: ‘Instinctively, some ministers and officials are against the idea. It's not that they actively support a secular programme. But there is concern that faith-based funding streams are, by necessity, exclusive on a financial level.'

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WHITEHALL

Salary worries dog devolution debate

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