Council fat cats cash in on six-figure salaries as taxpayers squeezed: Record 4,700+ on £100k while council tax soars and services fall apart

Tony Blair was still in office, the last Harry Potter novel was being released, Fabio Capello was appointed England manager, and the TaxPayers’ Alliance released the first ever Town Hall Rich List.

With the launch of the 20th edition, the rich list continues to expose the enormous sums being dished out to local council bosses and this year is a record breaker for all the wrong reasons.

A whopping 4,733 council employees had total remuneration of at least £100,000, including salary, pension, bonus, and other benefits, in 2024-25 - up 827 on last year and eight times more than when Town Hall Rich List was first published.

This headline figure might be shocking on its own but drill down deeper into the numbers and the picture goes from bad to worse for taxpayers. 1,255 took home at least £150,000, twenty times more than the first release and 320 had a higher salary than the prime minister, up a third more in just a year.

With council tax having just increased by the highest amount since 2004, these figures are a gut-punch for hard-working households. And what do we all have to show for it? Local services are cut to the bone. Bins go uncollected. Potholes remain unfilled. But there always seems to be the money for six-figure pay deals for council executives. Even the six authorities that have effectively declared bankruptcy since 2020 have managed to afford 124 of them.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. If there’s one bright spot, it’s that more councils are actually publishing their accounts on time. Only five authorities failed to release accounts, down from 59 for the 2024 edition. This transparency is absolutely essential if local taxpayers are to be able to effectively hold their councils to account.

And that’s the whole point of why we produce the rich list. To arm households, families, and taxpayers with the information they need. So that they can see where their money is going. So that they can ask themselves: “Am I really getting value for all the tax I’m paying?”

For far too many, the answer will be no.

Councils need to remember who it is they’re there to serve. Ensuring that every penny of taxpayers’ money is well spent should be at the heart of their decision making.

But in town halls across the country, it looks like little more than an afterthought if it’s even considered at all.

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Shimeon Lee is a policy analyst at the Taxpayers' Alliance

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