Lambeth’s chief executive moves up pay league table despite cuts

Analysis by the Green Party has revealed that Lambeth council’s chief executive Derrick Anderson has moved up the league table of London council chief executive’s pay, despite implementing some of the most far reaching cuts of any London borough.

The latest figures show that during 2010-11 Lambeth’s head earned £215,963 (this is excluding pension contributions, which were an additional £30,976, giving a total annual salary of £246,939) moving from fourth to third place among the 32 London boroughs. The Green Party analysis (based on each council’s 2010/11 Statement of Accounts) found that the average pay of council chief executives across London in fact fell by 4% during the same period.

In the previous financial year (2009-10) three chief executives of London councils were paid more than Derrick Anderson. In the face of cuts, many council heads cut their salaries. Lambeth’s did not. Anderson subsequently became the third highest paid council chief executive in London during 2010-2011, only marginally behind those of Tory run Hammersmith and Fulham (£225,785) and Kensington & Chelsea (£220,976).

In April this year, Anderson finally announced that he would take a pay cut for 2011-12 and waive his entitlement to a bonus. This was strange as Lambeth had previously claimed he received “no performance related pay or bonuses”.

The figures came to light through London-wide analysis by the London Green party. The amount earned by Anderson in 2010-11 is over 17 times the minimum wage earned by some of Lambeth council sub contractors and over 13 times the Living Wage which the council pays its direct employees.

Lambeth has still to pay a Living Wage to all those who work on behalf of the council. Green councillor Rebecca Thackeray campaigned in 2009 to get Lambeth to adopt a Living Wage for all who carry out work for the council. This was opposed by Labour councillors who only accepted that Lambeth’s direct employees should received a ‘Living Wage’.

Last month Lambeth came second from bottom in a league table of all councils in England, measuring the severity of cuts to disabled people’s services. This included a 22% cut to adult care and support.

It is a stark contrast that whilst Lambeth has some of the highest executive pay in the whole country, it is imposing some of the most severe of cuts for its most vulnerable residents.

People in Lambeth will wonder why, in one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, where the cuts are so deep, Lambeth’s head took so long to take a cut in his own pay, whilst many of his contemporaries did so across London.

But the priority must be for Lambeth council to increase the pay of all those it employs as other councils have done, so everyone gets a Living Wage. It isn’t just Lambeth’s chief executive and Lambeth residents who are being treated in different ways. The staff who implement vital council services are also subject to double standards.


Key figures for all boroughs in London are as follows:

Borough Staff paid more than £150k* Chief exec remuneration* No. of times higher than living wage

Barking and Dagenham 3 £162,087 10
Barnet 9 £200,976 12
Bexley 3 £199,248 12
Brent 2 £203,853 12
Bromley 3 £177,135 11
Camden 6 £204,961 12
City of London 1 £142,000 9
Croydon 4 £204,520 12
Ealing 1 £183,854 11
Enfield 1 £194,693 12
Greenwich 5 £189,667 11
Hackney 5 £177,956 11
Hammersmith and Fulham 5 £225,785 14
Haringey 2 £189,890 11
Harrow 2 £195,965 12
Havering 1 £180,213 11
Hillingdon 1 £183,250 11
Hounslow 1 £156,901 9
Islington 1 £210,000 13
Kensington & Chelsea 2 £220,976 13
Kingston 1 £179,000 11
Lambeth 5 £215,963 13
Lewisham 1 £192,387 12
Merton 1 £200,390 12
Newham 5 £188,022 11
Redbridge 1 £181,542 11
Richmond 1 £178,744 11
Southwark 5 £182,089 11
Sutton 1 £156,195 9
Tower Hamlets 2 £186,528 11
Waltham Forest 2 £180,000 11
Wandsworth 9 £191,122 12
Westminster 3 £200,543 12
London total / average 95 £188,983 11

* Total remuneration including expenses, excluding pension contributions.

Election Reflections

A huge thank you to everyone who voted for us on 6th May. You helped us almost double our vote across the borough - up from 17,560 in 2006 to 33,673 in 2010.

This is a major achievement and shows what many of us already knew - that these days the Green Party is a serious presence in Lambeth. Under a proportional voting system we would have gained 6 councillors and held the balance of power in the Council.

However, it certainly wasn't all good news for us. The local election coincided with the General Election and a massive swing to Labour (they won 44% of the vote and gained 70% of the seats on the Council). We lost our one Green councillor and failed to win any more seats.

There's lots we can learn from this. First, we're now much more aware of how difficult it is to fight a local election on the same day as a national election. The Greens do not have the money, profile or media coverage to compete with the big three parties on all fronts at once. Hopefully the fixed 5-year Parliamentary terms that the new government is proposing mean we won't face this problem again until 2030....

We also need to recognise that, despite everything (growing inequality, record rent rises, spiralling social care costs, persistent unemployment) Labour still has very strong residual support in this area. We need to get better at communicating with these people, and persuading them that it is Green councillors who will champion their interests and values most strongly.

Losing our councillor in Herne Hill is a big blow. Becca Thackray - who for the last 4 years has been the one Green Party member on Lambeth Council - has given a fantastic demonstration of what Green councillors can bring to an area.

She has worked incredibly hard for her constituents on all sorts of issues, while also bringing major changes at the Council level, including commitments to reduce carbon emissions, pay a London Living Wage to all staff and give local people a say in how planning money is spent in their area. She deserves enormous thanks.

The other major group to thank are all the volunteers who helped us in our campaign this year. We were joined by so many inspired and creative people who, like us, hoped to achieve something special in this area. I hope all the foot-slogging and hard work hasn't put anyone off! And that all our election volunteers will stay with us as we continue our campaign for a greener, more just and more inclusive Lambeth.

You can't believe everything you read

Have you seen the 'Election address' editions of Labour News that are doing the rounds for the council elections? The Herne Hill one has the grand headline 'TWO HORSE RACE IN HERNE HILL - Only Labour can beat the Tories', accompanied by an unreferenced graph, with no scale, suggesting that in Herne Hill Ward Labour have approx 45% of support, the Tories around 40% and the Liberals around 15% (my estimates, based on the sizes of the 3 bars) - and no mention of the Greens.

I'm one of the Green Party candidates in Herne Hill. In the last local election we got 36.7% of the vote (aggregated over 3 candidates), to Labour's 37.3%, and one of our candidates (Becca Thackray) got elected with more votes than any of the Labour candidates. The Conservatives came a distant third with just 16%.

We've asked Labour for an explanation for where they got the figures from and why we're not even featured on their graph.

So far we've received two different stories. First, they tried to tell us the graph was based on the results of the London Mayor election, but then we pointed out that in Herne Hill Ward 58% of people voted for Ken and only 21% for Boris - hardly a tight 'two-horse race'. Now their election agent has told us the graph is "an illustration of our view of the respective strengths of the three main national parties in this area." In other words, they've made it up!

At risk of engaging in boring old Punch-and-Judy politics, these Labour lies really are breathtaking. Not only are they pretending we don't exist - which you'd think was brazen enough seeing as we've already got one councillor in Herne Hill Ward - but they're also fabricating data. The reason? To mislead voters.

No wonder people despair of politicians.

Your survey responses - tackling crime in Lambeth

I've been reading the 60-second surveys that have been flooding in. Great that people in Herne Hill Ward have been prepared to engage with this way of feeding back concerns.

I've passed on a collection of the ones on anti-social behaviour to Tom Cornish who is the Sergeant heading up the local Safer Neighbourhood Team. On the strength of observations from residents in Poets Corner, the evidence for some bike thefts associated with drug-dealing has come to light.

I'm what's called a Winger. Sadly this says nothing for my fancy foot work. I sit at Camberwell Magistrates Court as a Justice of the Peace in a Bench of three (1 Chair & 2 Wingers). I am due to sit in the 'virtual court'. Prisoners already serving sentences sit in a room in the prison and can converse via satellite link-up with the Bench and their barrister in court. The plus is that prisoners don't 'lose their place' in a prison by being booked out, prison transport isn't needed and it saves on court time.

The Lambeth & Southwark court at Camberwell Green is reasonably well-balanced in terms of ethnicity, age and gender - though we do have rather a lot of women. A 22-year-old has joined us. We greatly miss Ted Lewis, former Co-op trade Unionist, Communist & greyhound racer.

Being a Magistrate is fascinating. I happened to join after being in the police service but it's not about understanding actual laws, to begin with, but to understand how to arrive at a fair decision. The recent discussion about being allowed to use force against a burglary has been interesting. I am pleased there has been no change in the law.

It's surprising how little is understood about the criminal justice system. I invite anyone to pop into a court and observe for themselves. It might inspire them to want to become a Magistrate themselves.

More hot air from Lambeth Labour

Lambeth Council needs to clean up its act to meet its own environment targets.

It’s almost two years since the Council agreed a plan to reduce its energy consumption but we’ve seen very little action so far.

Herne Hill's Green Party councillor, Becca Thackray, was part of the all-party Climate Change Commission that produced 45 urgent recommendations in 2007. Two years on and some of these recommendations still haven’t even been touched.

Progress on domestic insulation has been desperately slow, there’s still no council-run recycling for businesses and the inefficient Town Hall heating system is stuck in the dark ages.

At a time when thousands of people are losing their jobs, it is unforgivable that the Labour are failing to invest seriously in energy efficiency and launch a clean energy revolution that could provide hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Women forge ahead in Green politics

Cllr Rebecca Thackray, Jean Lambert MEP, and Rebecca Findlay, Streatham Parliamentary Candidate, campaigning outside Lambeth Town Hall for a living wage

In a statement for International Women’s Day, Lambeth Councillor Rebecca Thackray said: ‘Women comprise 51% of the world’s population, yet hold only 16% of the world’s parliamentary and congressional seats. Women make a huge contribution to family, society and healthcare and I would like to see this reflected in our political representation.’

The Green Party aims to lead the way in putting forward female candidates in local government elections. Recently in the North of England and Midlands, 42% of Green Party candidates were women, a clear 9% ahead of Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Councillor Thackray commented: ‘The benefit of having women serve political roles is not just an issue of numerical equality. Women MPs address issues of particular concern to their gender but which have huge repercussions for families, such as health, domestic violence and low wages. I am a feminist: I also believe that it does not serve men to have women so poorly represented.’

Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party, welcomes the creation of Green Party Women to work in conjunction with an informal group, Women By Name, which has long acted within the party to support and encourage women members to take up prominent roles.

According to Councillor Thackray, ‘The barriers to women entering politics are, bluntly: confidence, culture, childcare and cash. It is in the interests of both men and women to eradicate these barriers.’

A Living Wage for Lambeth

Lambeth's Green Party councillor, Becca Thackray, has successfully passed a motion to commit the London Borough of Lambeth to paying a ‘Living Wage’ for all its employees.

However, a wrecking amendment put forward by Labour means that the Council can continue underpaying hundreds of staff who work for the Borough as contractors. These include cleaners, security/reception staff and labourers, many of whom are paid much less than regular Council staff.

The original motion stated that, "Lambeth Council reaffirms its support for the establishment of the London Living Wage, set at a level calculated by the Living Wage Unit to avoid the 'working poverty trap' in the capital, a situation affecting around 400,000 Londoners who are paid less than can reasonably fund the basic costs of living in London."

By watering the motion down, Labour have let down precisely those working people who they claim to represent. Their rhetoric about helping the people of Lambeth get through the recession will sound particularly hollow to those earning poverty wages on Labour-run Lambeth contracts.

A Day in the Life of A Coucillor

By Rebecca Thackray
This article first appeared in the Local Government Association's First Magazine

Boundaries between my various roles are clear to me but not always to others. I spend the morning at Brixton Advice Centre where I work as a general adviser.

You wouldn’t believe how many people come to a legal advice centre with queries in that category marked ‘other’. I admire the specialists and I pick up useful updates on debt and housing from them, but the questions I get asked are far more intriguing. A woman wants to trace her husband from a decade ago, realising that she cannot remarry until she is divorced. I used to be a police officer and my approach is a methodical ‘where, when, what, why and how?’ and I always bear in mind that there may be someone out there who would really rather not be found.

After the drop-in I metaphorically change hats. I cycle off as a councillor to look at railway arches with a local restaurant owner with a view to traders storing cardboard and bottles for recycling. You’d think Herne Hill was Camberwick Green to hear him talk. This corner of London will feel even more villagey if a farmers’ market comes to the area. I was keen to make this part of the council’s regeneration planning.

Lactose junkie
I go to the corner shop for milk. I am something of a lactose junkie, requiring endless mugs of milky tea and vast quantities of yoghurt. I get cornered by a large man. I am not alarmed by his urgent whisper nor by the scissors in his top pocket. He is the barber next door asking for help regarding the mental health of his daughter. I leaf through council mail and see some initiatives on waste. Tetrapaks are being recycled in Lambeth now – if only thick plastics could follow suit.

A friend emails me about her friend in East Grinstead: “she puts everything possible in her recycling box ever since the stuff that can’t be recycled stopped being called rubbish and became known as landfill.” So often a name change is a euphemism but I like the idea of referring to rubbish as landfill and I forward it to the executive member for environment. I am not entitled to serve on council committees but I did get my teeth into a cross-party commission on climate change and I share the recommendations with other Green councillors in London. It can be lonely without a network of mutual support.

I receive a phone call from a police sergeant wanting an out-of-hours warrant signing. My magistrate hat goes on – I’ve been a magistrate since 1997. The grounds for the warrant are sobering. I drop off some information for the barber who works long hours too, serving the heads of the local community. I include details of a nearby resource centre for the mental health needs of African and Caribbean people – I used to work at the health centre and this place has an excellent reputation.

It occurs to me to check with him: “Were you asking me as a councillor, advice worker or nurse?” “I just thought you were someone who might know” he says simply.

Climate Change Commission Recommendations

Lambeth Council's Climate Change Commission has suggested a comprehensive set of targets and procedures for the Borough. You can read the full report by clicking the link below.

Councillor Rebecca Thackray (pictured), who was a member of the commission, said

"The current government is famous for setting ambitious targets and then doing nothing. Here in Lambeth, we can show them the right way forward."

Climate_Change_Recommendations.doc