CRUMBRIA: 1/4/2025: EXCLUSIVE

THE next time Councillors come knocking at your door begging for votes, it might be worth asking why they hike your Council Tax yet pay their bosses disgusting amounts of money?

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has today published its Town Hall Rich List 2025 which names and shames the Local Authority Fat Cats of 2023-24 earning more than £100,000 a year.

Shamed at Number 7 in the Top 10 is Wokemoreland & Farcical Council for the £326,825 they chucked at former director Jonathan Readman.

You read that right.

“Reddies” (left) was paid a mere £56,660 a year for holding the fort as Interim Director of Childrens Services at W&F Clowncil.

What’s propelled him into the Fat Cat Top 10, pop pickers, is the £270,000 pension payment handed over to him by the Council when Mr Moneybags left the authority in July 2023.

Reddies worked at W&F from 1st April 2023 until 9th July 2023.

(Surely he CAN’T have walked away with £326,825 after just 99 days on the Council payroll?)

He also bagged £8,500 in termination costs!

Previously he also worked as a director at Cumbria County Council from 1st January 2019 until he was made redundant when it was dissolved.

Two questions need answers.

Q1: When was Readman’s life-changing quarter-of-million pound pension package hatched?

Q2: Did his departing pay-out from W&F also relate to sums accrued while at CCC?

Maybe our wonderfully open and fully transparent Liberal Democrat Council might elucidate for the delectation of its pissed-off Taxpayers?

If not, then our fabulously investigative local “newspapers” are almost certain to have a potential “Splash” this week…again served up on a silver platter courtesy of the Chronic.

It’s not the first time “Reddies” has caught the media’s attention for money so Cumbria and Wokemoreland should have known what they were letting themselves in for.

Back in 2018, he was Interim Director of Childrens Services at Lancashire County Council (there’s a lot of wonga to be made in these temporary Council jobs if you’re prepared to move around like a gold prospector).

While in Preston it slipped out that “Reddies” was getting £1,125 a day from the Public Sector trough.

Also featured in the Taxpayers’ Alliance +£100k shit list were these other staff from Westmorland and Furness Council as set out here and setting us back £2.5 MILLION.

*The TPA list of W&F staff on £100k or more*.

Remember Taxpayers, their pay has gone UP since the above figures were committed to Excel and is going UP again this year.

More champers, Comrade?

***

Crumberland Council didn’t feature in the TPA’s list of Council staff earning £100k or more. (Possibly because the Council may not have provided this information to them). Crumberland does have many staff on £100k or more a year.