While the squeeze on public spending continues, the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) would have you believe that East Sussex County Council is increasing the number of its top officers (The Argus, May 14).
However, the truth is the number has actually been reduced.
What the TPA doesn’t make clear is that its figures include staff who have taken voluntary redundancy or have been made redundant. These people are, by law, entitled to a severance payment as compensation for loss of employment – but this is a one-off cost.
If you take those people out of the equation, our figures for 2011/12 have gone down, and not up as the TPA suggests.
When the figures for 2012/13 are published, we expect our numbers to go down again.
This time we hope the TPA will make that clear.
Simon Hughes, assistant chief executive, East Sussex County Council
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