Cheshire’s police and crime commissioner has defended a 33% pay rise he gave his deputy, writes Belinda Ryan.
PCC John Dwyer told a councillor he made a mistake when initially calculating the salary for the role filled by David McNeilage.
Cllr Jonathan Parry (Lab) referred to the increase at a meeting of Middlewich Town Council.
Cllr Parry said: “The reason I’m asking is we’re going to be paying more in Middlewich and we want to know how much of that is being seen on the ground that we will get the benefit of.”
As reported previously by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the deputy commissioner’s salary jumped from £38,250 when he was appointed in June of last year, to £51,000 in November.
Mr Dwyer said: “I manage now a budget of about £250 million.
“My office costs about £1m and my office is your office because we’re there representing the public of Cheshire and we’re holding the chief constable to account.”
With regard to his deputy’s salary, Mr Dwyer said: “I made a mistake.”
He said he calculated in May, when he took up office, that the job he wanted the deputy to do would be equivalent to half of his own salary.
“When I actually get him in post and realise that the job I’m asking him to do is a lot more complicated because of what I’ve inherited from my predecessor, it needed a lot more work doing on it, I took a view then of actually this pay is not right and not the right level,” said the commissioner.
“So I’m not giving him a pay rise, what I did was to readjust the pay level which I think he should have had right from the beginning.
“It is a genuine mistake on my part and indeed the police and crime panel said in November that had I declared this to them in May they would have accepted it anyway.”
Having looked at his budget (2020/2021) from a previous enquiry (on the link the PCC provided) there appeared to be a projected small underspend of £25k on the £700k annual cost of the PCC. It is worrying that he now says his office cost is about £1million. Surely some clarification is needed.