The chief executive of St Albans District Council was paid £104,060 last year – more than five times the salary of the council’s lowest-paid member of staff.

The figures were presented to the council’s planning, resources, housing and commercial scrutiny committee as part of the annual review of the council’s pay policy last Tuesday (January 21).

They showed that the lowest paid employee in the council – excluding apprenticeships – earned £19,404 last year, including a £609 outer London fringe payment.

And that means for every pound paid to the lowest-paid employee, the chief executive was paid £5.36.

The report also compares the salary of the chief executive’s pay to the average salary across the entire council workforce, when the median pay figure is taken into account.

And according to this measure, the top salary was four times higher than the average.

According to the report to the committee, guidelines from the Hutton Review suggest the pay of a chief executive should not be more than 20 times that of the lowest-paid employees.

At the meeting of the committee, councillors also backed a number of changes to the council’s pay policy – that will be determined by a meeting of the full council next month.

They backed plans to formalise the deputy head of service role within the pay grade structure and to adjust pay grade boundaries to those staff at ‘grade six’ or above, to bring pay in line with neighbouring authorities.

Grade six is typically middle-ranking council officers – including many of the technical and professional staff such as surveyors and planners – where salaries currently range between £27,905 and £30,507.

And they agreed to increase holiday entitlement for staff by 1.5 days, in recognition that the civic offices would no longer close over the Christmas break (aside from bank holidays).

In the past, the civic offices would close – giving staff the additional time off. But now the offices are used by other public sector partners and the offices will only close on bank holidays.

The change means staff will not lose out on the leave they have become used to – but they will be able to take it when they please.

The pay policy document will be considered by a meeting of the full council on February 26.