The number of council workers receiving gold-plated pensions of more than £100,000 a year has nearly tripled in the last five years, The Telegraph can reveal.
A record 245 ex-council workers across Britain now enjoy six-figure payouts in retirement, almost triple the number of 94 in 2021-22.
Analysis also showed the number of retirees receiving at least £50,000 a year had doubled to 7,382 during the same period.
Tom McPhail, a pension expert and scheme trustee, told The Telegraph: “Council budgets are under pressure across the country and council taxes are increasing faster than inflation. Meanwhile, many local government pension schemes are now in surplus.
“At a time when many ordinary taxpayers are struggling to fund their own pension, it’s not unreasonable to ask whether it’s fair that so many council employees are retiring with such generous gold-plated pensions.”
The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), one of the UK’s largest final salary pension schemes, funds more than 2.4 million retirements a year and another five million workers have built up generous future entitlements.
Retirees receive a guaranteed, inflation-linked pension for life, which was previously based on their final salary, but is now calculated according to their average wage.
To assess the cost, The Telegraph sent Freedom of Information requests to every scheme in England, Scotland and Wales, with 88 out of 97 responding.
The results revealed that the number of pensions in payment had increased by just 23pc since 2021-22, but the total number exceeding £100,000 a year had rocketed by 261pc.
The number of pensions above £50,000 had also risen by 212pc.