Housing association will not base top salary on for-profit organisations
Anchor takes new tack on chief’s pay
A housing association whose former chief executive earned almost twice as much as the prime minister has said it will no longer link the pay of its head to that of private sector firms.
Anchor Trust set the pay of former chief executive John Belcher using salary data from charities, private companies and social care organisations.
Mr Belcher’s £391,000 salary and benefit package in 2008/09 was criticised as being ‘deeply inappropriate’ in a recession by Conservative housing spokesman Grant Shapps.
Mr Belcher suddenly left the organisation at the end of October and Anchor advertised for a successor last week.
However, the trust is understood to have told the social housing regulator that it will not benchmark the salary for the new chief executive against for-profit private sector organisations.
In reply to an email from Steve Sitch, a housing consultant, urging the regulator to ensure chief executives were not overpaid, Tenant Services Authority chief executive Peter Marsh said: ‘I can assure you that as the RSL [registered social landlord] regulator I have met and discussed CEO pay with the chairman of Anchor and while the pay of their executive is a matter for them alone, I have a clear understanding that the salary offered to their next CEO will not be benchmarked against private for-profit comparators.’
Mr Shapps, who had also been sent the email complaining about Anchor’s remuneration, replied: ‘As you may know, I recently used a speech at the National Housing Federation to say that we would take a very dim view of RSL pay packets which gave little regard to the state of the economy. Furthermore the degree of waste and frivolous spending within the sector, including the regulator, is a matter of serious concern to us.’
A spokesperson for Anchor said: ‘The salary and bonus, as always, will be benchmarked against comparable organisations.’
In the past Anchor has said that its competitors include profit-making care organisations and private retirement home builders such as Southern Cross and McCarthy and Stone. The chief executive of Southern Cross earned £430,000 in the year ending September 2008, but his firm’s turnover was £899m - more than three times the £267m of Anchor in 2008/9.
The trust is to hold final interviews and make the appointment on 25 February 2010.
Public sector big earners
£545,000 (2007/08)
John Foster, former chief executive of Wakefield Council
£310,500 (2008/09)
Yasmin Chaudhry, head of County Durham PCT
£197,689 (2009/10)
Gordon Brown, prime minister
Source: Taxpayers Alliance
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Readers' comments (1)
kass | 11/12/2009 5:12 pm
this is the best news to come from Anchor for a long time...
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of very talented committed housing professionals in the country who would die to do this job for £120,000 and could do it just as well if not even better than anybody paid 5 times this much.
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