Highland

The register

Who is paid what

Basis A dash means the accounts did not disclose the figure. It does not mean zero. Employer pension is what the council pays into that officer’s pension on top of the salary. Where the accounts printed initials, the full name comes from the council’s own documents, and the methodology explains how.

The trajectory

What has actually happened to the pay

Pay for comparative years is as the accounts disclosed it, which for a few councils is total remuneration rather than salary alone. Band D excludes water and sewerage.

Both lines start at 100 in 2019/20, so they can be read against each other: the gap between them is the gap between what the chief executive is paid and what the household bill has done since.

The whole senior team, salaries only

Basis Every officer in the council’s senior-employee table, with no £100,000 floor. Salaries as disclosed, never added up across a year where a figure is missing. Employer pension contributions appear against each officer above and are not in these totals. A star marks a year read from the following year’s accounts as its prior-year column. A few councils leave mid-year leavers out of that column, so a starred total can run slightly low.

The cohort

How many staff here are on the good money

574 employees were paid above £50,000 in 2019/20. By 2024/25 it was 1,275. Above £100,000 the count went from 3 to 20.

Basis The statutory £5,000-band disclosure covering all employees, counted above a fixed cash threshold as the accounts count it. Counting instead above the CPI equivalent of the 2019/20 threshold gives 574 then against 510 now, and the JSON carries that figure for every year. The backdated 2022/23 teachers’ pay award, paid in April 2023, pushes the 2023/24 figure up.

The goodbyes

Exit packages

Highland disclosed 29 exit packages costing £1.2m over the six years to 2024/25.

Packages of £100,000 and over

Basis Exit packages as the remuneration report discloses them, by cost band. For most councils the cost covers pension strain and added years as well as the money paid to the person leaving. The bands name nobody, and neither does this record. A dagger marks a year where some bands showed packages with no cost against them, so the total is a floor rather than the full figure.

The invisible payroll

What the council pays into pensions

Basis Employer contributions taken from the pension notes to the accounts. This is the council’s own money going in, not the staff’s. This is the local government scheme only. The teachers’ scheme is a separate payment to the Scottish Government and is not added in here, because the council never printed a combined total.

Prior-year comparatives in the 2020/21 accounts. LGPS: 'Employers contributions payable to the scheme' 25,123 (£000) in Note 26 Defined benefit pension schemes (Council column, MiRS reconciliation); teachers: 'The figures for 2019/20 were £21.700m and 23.0%' in Note 25 Pension schemes accounted for as defined contribution schemes. LGPS in £000 (x1,000), teachers in £m (x1,000,000). No combined total printed. Excluded: NHS Superannuation Scheme contributions £1.14m (Note 25) and discretionary benefits arrangements £2.859m (Note 26), disclosed separately.

Officers and members

The paid and the elected

2024/25, salaries as disclosed

Basis The officers’ bar is salary only, before employer pension contributions. The councillors’ bar is the total printed in the remuneration report.

Salaries: exact figure from the Remuneration Report narrative ('The remuneration in 2024/25 for all councillors was £1,697,961'). Total from Table 2 'Members' Allowances and Expenses' (£000): Remuneration 1,698, Travel and subsistence 122, All other expenses 10, Total 1,830; converted x1,000. Expenses null: printed as two separate lines with no combined expenses figure. Number of councillors not stated.

Arm’s length

Pay in the companies this council owns

Basis Read from each body’s own filed accounts. Several of them disclose a pay band and no name. Where the accounts, Companies House or the council’s own report put the identification beyond doubt, the name is given and the evidence recorded. Where they do not, the row stays exactly as printed.