Number Crunching

I have to say that critics of the management structures at the top of the new Police Service of Scotland - which comes into effect on 1 April 2013 - have a fair point.

Now I have nothing against the new Chief Constable - Stephen House - quite the opposite, but at a time when the economy is in such bad shape - I think it's fair to draw a few comparisons to assess how the new Scotland-wide service shapes up.

The new Chief Constable is to be paid a salary of £208,000 a year apparently - though I don't know whether that figure includes pensions payments. If not, then the real figure will be much  higher.

The new Chief Constable will have 4 Deputy Chief Constables - rather a lot in my experience - along with 6 Assistant Chief Constables.

So the new management team will have at least 11 members - which sounds completely bonkers I have to say - and will oversee the work of 17,000 police officers, the second largest force in the UK.

Now compare that with the salary of the Chief Executive of Glasgow City Council (the largest in Scotland) - who receives a salary of around £164,000 a year although that figure does not include pension contributions, as far as I recall.

To be fair Glasgow City Council is not a Scotland-wide body - but nonetheless it does employ around 30,000 staff which is much more than the Scottish Police Service.

'So what justifies the difference pay?', you might ask yourself, not reasonably. 

Maybe there is a link to the pay of the Metropolitan Commissioner of Police in London - presently Sir Bernard Hogan Howe?

In 2010 the annual salary of Britain's 'top cop' was £260,088 - but that figure excludes pension contributions which are probably worth another £50,000 a year or so - along with very generous retirement benefits which can often be accessed much earlier than other public servants.

But the Met Police Commissioner oversees the work of 31,000 police officers in London - almost twice the number in Scotland - and does the job with the help of only 1 Deputy (which seems right I have to say) and a mere 4 Assistant Chief Constables. 

Which results in a more sensible and workable management team of 6 people - including the boss.

I suppose when you consider the hugely inflated salaries paid to senior executives at the BBC - who presumably demand even more because they lead a UK-wide organisation - then there's nothing to get too worked up about. 

Yet whichever way you look at it some of the salaries paid to the UK's leading public servants are completely ridiculous - especially when you take their pension contributions and their very generous (often early) retirement benefits into account.