Why I earn every penny of my £170,000 salary to run the county council

8:29am Friday 2nd May 2008

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By Jack Blanchard »

SO how much are you prepared to pay for a decent boss? When it emerged last summer that Worcestershire County Council's next chief executive was to be paid a whopping £170,000 a year of council taxpayers' money, a storm of controversy erupted.

The salary, revealed in a job advert following the retirement of long-standing chief Rob Sykes, was instantly branded "ridiculous" by opposition Labour councillors, who claimed the wage for the council's top job had risen 40 per cent in the previous five years.

Since then, attacking council fat cat' salaries has become a fashionable pastime for journalists, letter-writers and campaigners alike, with pressure group the Taxpayers' Alliance recently criticising Worcestershire for paying four of its officers more than £100,000 a year each, and claiming councils nationwide could save a fortune if they cut back on top executives' pay.

So as I step into Trish Haines' modern, spacious office down at the newly-refurbished County Hall (bill to the taxpayer - £1.8 million), it does not seem too much of a cheap shot to ask the new chief executive how it feels to have her salary subjected to such relentless public criticism.

"I earn every penny of what I get paid," she replies, understandably a little defensively.

"But these are larger salaries than what a lot of people get paid - I don't blame anybody for questioning it."

Mrs Haines points to the scale of the job she began on March 1, a role which makes her ultimately responsible for the roads that carry you to work, the social services that care for your elderly parents and the schools that educate your children.

"This is a big business," she says. "We employ 18,000 staff, we have a budget of half a billion pounds, and things can go wrong. If you don't pay for the right skills, you end up with management problems. I'm an experienced chief executive and I know what the job involves - this is not a job you can just walk into straight off the street."

With her striking blonde hair and touch of refined glamour, Mrs Haines cuts a very different figure from the popular perception of County Hall's balding men in dusty old suits. So does she feel proud to be the first woman to take the county's top job?

She says: "I don't actually think the glass ceiling is quite as bad in local authorities. There are a larger proportion of woman managers in the public sector, so making it here is probably slightly easier."

Overcoming prejudice is something she is used to, however - her lilting Irish brogue reveals an upbringing in war-torn Belfast, where the Troubles ignited when she was 12 years old. She moved to England as a teenager at the height of the IRA's mainland campaign, just months after the Birmingham pub bombings.

"It was an issue," Mrs Haines says.

"People were worried about somebody with an Irish accent - there was a lot of suspicion, a lot of uncertainty. Once people got to know you, it was fine"

She studied to become a social worker and moved quickly through the tiers of management, eventually becoming assistant director of social services at the old Hereford and Worcester Council.

"I lived in Worcester for about six years," she says.

"I know the place very well - my children went to school at Christopher Whitehead."

With two children, and now four step-chidren and nine grandchildren to think about, she admits the long hours and high pressure of her career path have had an impact on family life. Her husband, she says, "gave up his career" so that she could pursue her own.

"You couldn't do this without the support of your partner," she says.

"That was a decision we took very early on in our marriage, that I would be the main breadwinner.

"But one of the continuing challenges is the struggle to keep a reasonable work/life balance. I think it's very important to do that - you become less good at your job otherwise, you lose that rounded approach. You have to be able draw on your own life, to think, Would I want my children or my elderly parents to use that service?' "

After spending the past five years as chief executive of Reading Council, overseeing one of the fastest-growing economies in the UK, how does it feel now to be returning to Worcester?

"We always wanted to come back here," she says.

"I was really delighted when I had the opportunity to apply for this job. Worcester was a safe place for the kids to grow up, but there's still enough to do here to make it an interesting place to be.

"Now we can enjoy the city as adults. We've been enjoying exploring the new restaurants that have appeared in the time we've been away, and it's such beautiful countryside around Worcester - I'd forgotten how beautiful it is, actually."

She knows there will be challenges ahead - not least the £25 million in savings that the council must find over the next three years - but as a woman who has been overcoming hurdles all her life, she remains quietly confident about the job in hand.

She says: "We know the funding situation is not going to get any easier. The challenge is to keep squeezing the efficiencies while maintaining our status as an excellent council. I'm really looking forward to it."