New accounts reveal how many staff at the struggling council now earn six-figure salaries
Birmingham Council House in Victoria Square(Image: Nick Wilkinson/Birmingham Live)
The number of Birmingham City Council staff earning more than £100,000 has tripled in three years – with 57 people at the struggling council now earning six-figure salaries.
That’s a big leap from 2022, when there were just 19 top earners.
The figures were revealed in newly-published, delayed draft accounts covering the last three years of the troubled council’s financial affairs.
READ MORE: Massive Labour shocks at Birmingham City Council as veteran councillors axed by party
The accounts remain in draft form because of the dire impact of the catastrophic failings that occurred when the council launched a new digital finances and HR system, known as Oracle.
Published this week, the accounts for 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 are crammed with insights and information. A first glance reveals the council has shed more than 400 staff in the last year, while the number of higher earners has increased.
The numbers don’t account for staff who were working for the council on contractor terms, as interims or consultants. The council had previously said it intended to reduce its agency bill as part of efforts to balance the books after it landed in serious financial distress.
In 2021-22, 19 people were earning more than £100,000. The following year this nearly doubled to 36, and went up again in 2023-24, to 52. Inflationary pressures will account for some of the increases.
The amounts include salary, allowances and bonuses.
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Among the biggest earners are the council’s senior executives, led by managing director Joanne Roney, whose salary is around £300,000 a year, with significant pension contributions on top.
Her predecessor Deborah Cadman, at the helm from March 2021 to March 2024, earned £244,000 annually in her first two years, but the accounts show that rose significantly to more than £269,000 in 2023.
She departed last year with a total package of more than £469,000. A total of 1,843 staff at the council in March this year were earning more than £50,000.
The council is embroiled in a bitter bins dispute with members of its waste services, including bin drivers and its former waste, recycling and collection officers. Strike action has been going on in the city for six months, with no potential solution in sight that doesn’t end in widescale redundancies.
The council published its overdue revised accounts for 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 this week, alongside its delayed accounts for the 12 months up to April 2025.
The accounts come with a strong caveat that they remain ‘draft’ because their accuracy cannot be guaranteed as the council’s financial records remain sullied by the catastrophic failures of the ‘Oracle’ system.
They were issued this week by Carol Culley, the new executive director of finance and the responsible S151 officer, a status with legal responsibility for the council’s finances.
In her introduction to the most recent accounts, she said she was ‘unable to establish with a reasonable level of certainty’ that the financial records were ‘free from material misstatement’.
She wrote: “The council implemented a new enterprise resource planning (Oracle) system in April 2022 – software which supports and integrates different parts of the council’s operations.
“There have been a number of issues with the running of the system since then.
“While fixes have been put in place to ensure the council’s assets are safeguarded, and to ensure transactions with residents, suppliers and customers can occur appropriately, it is not possible to establish with a reasonable level of certainty that the ledger is free from material misstatement for this financial year.”
She added: “It would be very costly for the council to gather the data needed to ensure the ledger is sufficiently free from material misstatement. It is unlikely this work would represent value for money.”
She also highlighted a series of ‘suspected breaches of laws and regulations by the council’ that were subject to ongoing investigation or review. These included:
potentially ‘overstating’ costs moved between the Housing Revenue Account (a separate council entity) and the General Fundoverspending on the ‘Pollinations’ project in Victoria Squarebreaches linked to equal pay liabilitiesthe Regulator of Social Housing having to issue a regulatory notice because the council failed to complete all its required statutory inspections (as a landlord) leaving thousands of tenants at risk of harmthe council continuing to trade with its wholly owned subsidiary, Acivico, despite the contract having lapsed.