I hadn’t spotted any announcement, but it seems that Sally Luton, head of Arts Council England WM will be stepping down in June 2010.
From the Express and Star (and spotted by D’Log), and to answer the question posed in the title:
an answer to a parliamentary question from West Bromwich East MP Tom Watson reveals that Ms Luton, who is paid £82,325 a year, will get 18 months salary plus a £91,008.60 lump sum from her pension when she leaves, bringing her one-off departure fee to £211,480.60. She will also get £33,080.37 a year pension for the rest of her life
I would leave a comment, but I can’t. I’m speechless.
Can we put this in some perspective?
Sally Luton has worked as a civil servant for 23 years and all that time enjoyed a pension plan as all civil servants do.
Her salary, as the head of an organisation that has a – what £50million turnover? – is totally par for the course. In fact compared to a senior role at BCC (say, Clive Dutton at the City) it’s my guess that it’s on the low side. A senior NHS manager would certainly be on that type of money.
I understand that sounds like a lot of money in terms of what artists are paid, but that’s not quite the point is it?
Any civil servant, having worked for 23 years and now entitled to draw a pension, a civil servants index linked pension is about that much. She’s not on any special deal. If you don’t like your taxes being spent in that way you perhaps should look further afield than the Arts Council: it’s happening all over.
And it’s my understanding that Sally, along with a heap of other Arts Council staff, is being made redundant, so is entitled to a lump sum. Having been there so long even the statutory amount is likely to be large and this has doubtless had some enhancement. That’s not unprecedented either.
By way of contrast, an associate solicitor (not a partner) at a regional law firm is probably making at least £80K – more in some cases. When I left the law six years ago, NEWLY QUALIFIED lawyers were starting on £90K in certain US law firms.
If we are going to comment about this award to this person do you think we should be doing FOI requests to a variety of public servants so that we are judging the figures in some context?
It’s very easy to look at a round sum and make a judgment about it. (You could as easily look at RFO grants and wonder what people do with “all that money”).
The message is simple: if you want a big pay out before you retire, be a civil servant and work somewhere for 23 years. I for one have never fancied that – and I give up my right to an index linked pension as a result.
Should artists have pensions and bonuses? Of course, but be aware that choices like that have their consequences too.
If we’re going to have a debate about the relative values of a society that pays bureaucrats in the arts world more than artists we should be armed with more than a one paragraph parliamentary answer reported in the Express and Star.
Careful about mentioning FOIs, there are people in this office who send them for fun.
This wasn’t intended to be a critical post necessarily, so I wouldn’t describe it as ‘armed’ in any way. Pushed for an opinion then, for the reasons you point out, the amount is probably fair enough (although comparisons with lawyers’ remuneration is going to skew things). I’m guessing that overall the cost will be counterbalanced by savings anyway.
However, it’s an interesting tidbit that’s come out about a restructure that’s yielded precious little official info (that I’ve seen).
Thanks Chris, I didn’t necessarily take the post to be critical of the payout in itself, but I just wanted to set the scant information in a bit of context. And yes, the comparison with lawyers is on one level, quite pointless: there are lots of people (including chief executives of arts funding bodies) who are paid more than artists and arts organisation executives.
The Arts Council re-organisation is reputedly a response to a call to save 15% of its operating costs while not touching the grants. You’ve got to guess that the on-costs of downsizing have been factored into this equation. (Please tell me that I didn’t just type “on-costs” and “downsize” in one sentence. I better get back to the Twitpanto instead).