Charity chief executives criticised for high salaries

16 Jun 2010 News

The College of Law, a charity which provides legal education, has defended the £440,000 salary of its chief executive, Nigel Savage, and the £410,000 wage of its deputy chief executive Alan Humphreys, after it was criticised on Roll on Friday, a website for lawyers and in the Sunday Times.

The College of Law, a charity which provides legal education, has defended the £440,000 salary of its chief executive, Nigel Savage, and the £410,000 wage of its deputy chief executive Alan Humphreys, after it was criticised on Roll on Friday, a website for lawyers and in the Sunday Times.

If follows criticism in the Telegraph this month, of the salaries of John Belcher, chief executive of housing charity Anchor, who received £391,000 in 2009 and David Cowans, chief executive of housing charity Places for People who earned £297,000 in the same year.

David Yates, chairman of the College of Law said its governors received independent advice on remuneration and incentive structures from Deloittes and that it was benchmarked against comparable organisations.

He continued: “The rise in remuneration for the chief executive and deputy chief executive last year was due, not to an increase in basic salary which stayed the same as the previous year, but instead to the award of bonuses linked to the achievement of both annual and long-term performance targets.”

The most recent accounts for the College of Law, show Savage received a 40 per cent pay rise in 2009, while the deputy chief executive Alan Humphreys received a 33 per cent pay increase.

Seb Elsworth, director of strategy at Acevo, has warned about the trend of national press coverage on chief executive's salaries in his personal blog this month:

“The obvious question is how long will it be before salaries of other sector chief executives are again making the headlines, and how will we respond when they do?," he said.

"In the still-frenzied media world following the expenses scandals of last year, and the supposed “new politics” of the coalition government, there is a very real risk that the very modest salaries which most third sector CEOs are paid could be conflated yet again with the excesses of the city and alienate many of the public on whose support we depend.”

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