SURREY County Council has been challenged to ensure “the proof is in the pudding” after it was revealed the authority has dished out an extra £10 million on senior staff wages in the last year.

Figures published by the council, in accordance with the Local Government Transparency Code 2015, has revealed the number of its officers earning more than £50,000 has increased from 407 in 2018/19 to 558 in 2019/20.

The number of those being paid between £50,000 and £54,999 has increased from 127 to 212.

But a greater increase is seen in the £60,000 to £64,999 pay bracket where the number of officers has jumped from 49 to 154.

In total, the pay bill for all senior employees has risen by around £10m.

At last week’s full council meeting Chris Botten, leader of the Surrey Opposition Forum and Lib Dem county councillor for Caterham Hill, asked whether the salary budget for senior staff was out of control.

He said: “In a time when Surrey County Council has been – and is still – undergoing a major transformation of its services, it is right that we challenge the administration on this large increase.

“While we appreciate it is necessary to have employees of the right calibre to deliver these changes, we need to be sure the right balance is being struck and keep the public informed how their money is being spent.”

But Stephen Spence, Farnham Residents county councillor for Farnham North, was more pragmatic – commenting that higher salaries could be the price to pay for long-overdue action on long-term issues such as Farnham’s traffic and pollution.

“It’s important residents get value for money for the council tax they pay,” said Mr Spence.

“After so many years of austerity cuts, the fact that things like the Farnham traffic is at last being properly assessed and hopefully addressed, will cost.

“As a member of the audit and governance committee, I will be keeping a close eye on whether the money spent, including on salaries, is delivering what is needed.

“The Farnham county councillors have worked together in getting many changes to how Surrey County Council works for the town.

“That has involved getting senior staff to engage more fully with residents’ concerns.

“The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. It is right to scrutinise the remuneration paid to ensure results match the outlay.”

A Surrey County Council spokesman said: “Our focus is on providing the best possible services to the 1.2m residents of Surrey, and to ensure we do this we need to have the best people in senior positions within the council.

“The scale of our work means we employ 10,000 staff, and have an annual budget of £1 billion, and to attract the best people from both the public and private sector for this, we need to offer competitive salaries.”

The data was released on the Surrey-I website, at www.surreyi.gov.uk/dataset/2rd6w/senior-salaries, as part of Surrey’s “obligations for transparency”.