Workington
Man and `envious` Boris?
The
housing press reveals that the boss
of the town`s housing association has won a mouth-watering salary of nearly a quarter of a million pounds.
The name Workington
Man is claimed to be the key to success
of the Tories at the polls next month- the name came from a
think tank called Onward which identified him as an older white male from the
north of England.
But what exactly Workington Man made of that
gigantic salary increase- up more than 20 per cent on the year and fifty
per cent more than Boris`s pay- is not known.We can only guess.
The massive rise to £234,563 will take a lot of explaining say critics.The rise has been won by Ms Carol Matthews chief executive of the giant Riverside Housing Association which led a controversial takeover of the much smaller Workington-based Impact Housing Association almost exactly a year ago.
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| Takeover time: Ms Matthews(left) and former Impact chairman, Mark Costello |
That takeover came about after the social housing regulator downgraded Impact as not fit for purpose because of its failings in governance and viability.
Impact was accused of secrecy, spin, lack of transparency and failure to properly consult tenants.A former Impact chairman Mr Adrian Waite, a leading local government management consultant made the criticisms in letter to the then community secretary Mr Sajid Javid.
One year on and critics say that Ms Matthews` mouth-watering salary has also not been properly explained. Liverpool-based Riverside which has 56,000 homes nationwide did make a statement about the salary to the social housing magazine Inside Housing which has just completed a survey of 156 housing association`s chief executives.
The survey revealed that Ms Matthews` near quarter million pay rise was the third highest of the 156 and the average pay rise of the 156 was £174,896.
The Riverside statement said:“Ms Matthews’ salary was increased in January 2019 as a result of changes to the organisation’s senior leadership team and to bring it closer in line with market rates for comparable roles in the sector.
“Carol is a highly respected leader, responsible for a large, complex national housing and care business with an annual turnover of £354 million.
“She personally chose to be paid less than her predecessor when she joined Riverside as chief executive in February 2012 and since then her salary has remained, and still remains, one of the lowest in the sector compared to the leaders of similar sized housing providers.”
This is not the first time that Riverside has been criticised for the fat cat salaries paid to its bosses says Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation, which for many years has campaigned to hold Riverside to account. The Federation publishes this blog.
A spokesman for the Federation said today: “Not many years ago we and others drew attention to these outrageous Riverside salaries. So it is not surprising that Riverside now praises Ms Matthews for chosing to work for a reduced salary.
“ Her predecessors were not so restrained and because of that they came in for a lot of criticism.
“Riverside may now think that Ms Matthews`salary -a 20 per cent pay rise to nearly a quarter of million pounds a year - is low.
"Workington Man would say that`s crazy!
"Boris must be very envious!”
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