Ofcom - Average Salary Only £71,000 12/11/11
Posted by Kevin Box on Fri, Nov 12, 2010 @ 11:37 AM
The headlines on Ofcom’s cuts were impressive. Ofcom is to cut 170
jobs and reduce its budget by 28.2% over the next four years which will see its budget fall by £30m while it loses almost one in five staff to meet new spending review targets.
But what left me really gasping were the figures that the cuts revealed. If Ofcom is cutting 20% of its staff, and that equates to 170 people, then it must employ around 850 people. But no, the actual figure is more like a staggering 873 people.
If Ofcom employs 873 people then that means each employee costs £162,657. Since the average salary is only (ONLY!) £71,000, what has Ofcom been doing with the remaining £91,657? Their offices must be very, very, very nice indeed but do they really need all that glass in the centre of London?
Ed Richards, 44 and Ofcom’s Chief Executive, has agreed to take a pay cut to £343,541 (down from £381,712 presumably). He said: "These are difficult times for everyone in the public sector and it is right that Ofcom plays its part in meeting the challenge facing the public finances."
Of course this is a job that is full of commercial risk and requires a man steeped in commerce to run it…doesn’t it? A shame then that Richards has worked for the BBC and was previously a Senior Policy Advisor to Tony Blair and an advisor to Gordon Brown MP. It clearly pays to have nice Labour friends!
In fairness all this largesse and excess hasn’t directly cost the tax payer anything. Ofcom has been able to levy whatever it felt like on the industries it regulates and it has done. So is it now going to collect less or remit some to the treasury?
No one is denying that the industries it regulates need some regulation though. So I volunteer to do it on Tuesday afternoons, offering a net saving to the economy of £140m. Just a shame about the 800+ jobs.
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