Inspection of Accounts

National legislation — the Local Audit and Accountability Act (2014) and the Accounts and Audit Regulations (2015) — gives registered voters the right to inspect their local authority’s accounts, ask questions about them and object to them, during a period of 30 working days every year.

Pay policy

Every year, Lambeth Council publishes its Statement of Accounts, setting out how much money the council has received during the year, and what it has spent money on. The statement is prepared in accordance with the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 and the Code of Practice on Local Authority Accounting in the United Kingdom issued by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) for 2018/19.

The accounts also include details of “remuneration”, defined as “amounts paid to or receivable by”, senior officers and other employees receiving £50,000 or more, excluding pension contributions. The number of officers employed by Lambeth Council on salaries of over £50,000 has increased in recent years. However, this increase is mainly due to the effects of pay inflation, which has pushed up pay-levels across the board.

It is therefore untrue to say that Lambeth employs a large number of extra “senior managers”, as has been claimed in some places; the officers in posts where salaries have increased beyond £50,000 due to inflation remain at the same level of seniority.

The analysis below gives more details.

Remuneration analysis - post over £50,000