TAX campaigners are calling on Essex councils to stop pay rises of top officials after releasing their 2022 Rich List.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance’s Town Hall Rich List reveals the annual salaries of Essex’s top council officials who earned more than £100,000 in 2020-21.

Total salaries are calculated by adding the officials’ base annual salary, expenses, compensation and bonuses to their pension amount from the year 2020 to 2021.

The list shows six Colchester Council officials earned more than £100,000 per year including two executive directors, - one earning £130,490 and the other earning £102,601 a chief executive, who earns £106,783 and three assistant directors.

A Colchester Borough Council spokesperson said: “All the information on Colchester Borough Council’s senior staff salaries is in the public domain and can be accessed online.

“We publish salary data based on salaries not including pension contributions. On this basis there are currently just two employees, including the Chief Executive, with a salary more than £100k.

“No Colchester Borough Council employee earns above £150k.”

In Tendring, two officials earned more than £100,000 - the chief executive and corporate director who earn £163,270 and £121,874 respectively.

A Tendring Council spokesman, said: “All staff are paid in accordance with national pay scales for local authorities and we regularly benchmark these rates to ensure we are in line with best practice across the country.

“All of our staff work extremely hard for Tendring taxpayers and offer real value for money in what they do and achieve for the district.

"The Chief Executive and Management Team are no exception to this, and these roles also come with a lot of personal responsibility for the council as a whole.”

However, the largest earners were found at Essex County Council.

According to the TPA, a 37 officials earned more than £100,000 per year, the highest in the East of England and second highest in the UK.

The highest earner was chief executive Gavin Jones who earned a base salary of £196,950 with a £38,799 pension.

Mr Jones also claimed £14,117 of expenses, among the top ten highest in the UK.

Combined it means in 2020/21, Mr Jones earned £249,866, making him the best paid council official in the East of England.

The TPA is now calling on local authorities to stop rises and cut down on wasteful spending.

John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: “Taxpayers facing a cost of living crisis want to know they are getting value for money from their local authority leadership.

“With households having suffered through the pandemic and now struggling under colossal tax bills, the country needs councils to prioritise key services without resorting to punishing tax hikes.

“These figures will allow residents to judge town hall bosses for themselves and hold their local councils to account.”

In response to the figures, an Essex County Council spokesperson added: “Essex County Council is one of the largest local authorities in England and the largest in the East of England.

"Over the past ten years, we’ve transformed the council to continue to improve and deliver the services people need, while at the same time keeping council tax in check.

“We have demonstrated a strong commitment to achieving the best value for money and outcomes for residents, embodied by our current Everyone’s Essex strategy, which includes an ambitious levelling up programme and wide-ranging projects to combat climate change, from tree planting to promoting active transport.

“We need leadership of the highest calibre if we are going to continue to deliver in the way we have been.

"This is all the more significant for an authority focussing on rebuilding Essex following two years of supporting our communities during the COVID-19 outbreak.

“If we are to attract the best people in the country to help us deal with the pre-existing challenges faced by the public sector, as well as those that we will continue to face for some time, we need to offer an appropriate level of salary and remain competitive in a marketplace where we compete with the commercial sector for the best talent.

“Gavin Jones, Chief Executive of ECC, has proved an excellent leader over the course of the past two years, and he is now sharing best practice with other authorities in England.

"According to the Taxpayer’s Alliance report, Mr Jones has a take home salary, including pension and expenses, of £249,866.

"Essex has a population of 1.44m people, so his leadership costs every person in the county approximately 17p each year.

“All our salaries are subject to regular independent review and measured against the public and not for profit sector.

“We’ve already delivered savings of £742 million over the last 10 years and expect to deliver a further £36 million of savings in the current year (2022/23) thanks to our strong track record of financial management and our focus on excellent service delivery.

"This is against a backdrop of reducing central government funding and significant budget pressures arising most notably from additional demand for social care.”