Extract from IDS Executive Compensation Review 327

Trends in NHS trust executive pay

While discussions about directors’ remuneration usually focus on the FTSE 100, top pay in the public sector can attract even more public concern. One of the most sensitive areas of the public sector is the NHS and since the early 1990s we have been looking at trust annual accounts, and this article looks at what they say about boardroom pay.

It seems that the recently established foundation trusts in England are using their new freedoms to push the pay of their chief executives ahead of their non-foundation counterparts if our fifteenth survey of NHS board remuneration is any guide. Taken together, the latest increases indicate that the salaries of all NHS directors of English hospital trusts were moving well ahead of the rest of the economy, but they have taken place against a background of major reorganisation and high staff turnover at board level. Data for our latest report is based on information published in the most recent annual accounts, all of which had year-end dates of 31 March 2007. In total, we collected pay details for 1,492 full-time directors from the accounts of 280 English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish trusts and health boards.

Tables provide an aggregate summary of the median salary and total remuneration figures for selected board positions, as well as looking at pay patterns by location. Further analysis provides an indication of the pattern over the last 10 years and shows NHS trust chief executive remuneration against various measures of employee earnings across the economy.