Southport Councillor’s “spectacularly ill-informed” claims refuted by Sefton Leader

A Southport Councillor has been criticised for his “spectacularly ill-informed” recent claims that Sefton Council was to use a “massively generous” pay policy for senior officers.

Birkdale’s Liberal Democrat Councillor Simon Shaw attacked what was described as “Sefton Labour’s controversial plan” to involve private sector management consultants Hay Group in the decision on how much pay to award senior staff.  

Cllr Shaw concluded that:

“The only logical reason is that they want to consider making massively generous pay awards for Sefton Council’s top officers.  In contrast, the Lib Dems believe that the Council should simply follow the National Joint Council line on pay, namely what is agreed nationally between local government employers and the unions.”

This has been thoroughly dismissed by Sefton’s Leader Cllr Ian Maher, however, who revealed that in fact the Hay Group advisory role has been in place since 2007… and it was actually introduced under the then Liberal Democrat leadership of the Council.

“Councillor Shaw has a tendency towards the dramatic in his media work and it seems often likes to present a particular slant that is completely at odds with the reality of the situation. In this instance, he’s rather outdone himself and is quite spectacularly ill-informed. The Hay Group have given advice on this matter since the Lib-Dems brought them in on it over a decade ago. We will be reviewing their role as we almost invariably stick to the National Joint Council recommendations.”

Cllr Maher also pointed out that claims that senior officers could be in line for a “bumper pay rise” as a result were equally fictitious:

“There is no “bumper rise” for senior officers or any council staff and given the wage cap imposed by the Liberal Democrats and the Tories on the public sector for all these years, it’s insulting to them to make that claim. It is the stuff of fantasy and it badly serves the people of Southport and of Sefton as well as our staff.” 

Labour’s prospective candidate for Birkdale, Danny Burns, said Cllr Shaw needed to stop putting out incorrect information out in the media:

“Cllr Shaw often likes to boast of his accountancy skills, however, it seems he needs to brush up on his history and politics at the very least. It’s high time he stopped this sort of wrong information about Sefton, it sets a very low bar and our councillors should be better than that.”