By Andrew Rowson
Local newspapers recently published details of the 30 council bosses in Cambridgeshire with salaries over £100,000. The information, taken from councils' 2023-24 accounts, was published by the Taxpayers' Alliance. By law, councils have to agree senior salaries for the upcoming financial year in the annual Pay Policy Statement, so the most recent figures available are for 2025-26, the financial year that began at the beginning of this month.
Cambridgeshire's highest paid council boss is Dr Stephen Moir, the County Council Chief Executive Officer. His salary for 2025-26, approved by the full council on 18th March 2025 is £200,593. With Employer's National Insurance contributions of £29,339 on top, the total cost to the taxpayer for Dr Moir's services this year is £229,932. The council does not make any pension contributions to the CEO's pension.
CEOs, like all holders of public office, are required to abide by the law and the Seven Principles of Public Life, known as the Nolan Principles. These are:
- Selflessness (acting solely in the public interest)
- Integrity (avoiding conflicts of interest)
- Objectivity (no discrimination or bias)
- Accountability to the public for their decisions and actions
- Openness (i.e. not withholding information from the public without clear and lawful reasons)
- Honesty
- Leadership (treating others with respect, supporting the principles and challenging poor behaviour wherever it occurs).
- During the 2024 accounts inspection period last summer, Dr Moir supported his finance officers' decision to deny local electors their statutory rights to inspect and have copies of This Land Ltd's 2023-24 draft accounts and key invoice and contract documents, in particular in relation to its administrative expenses (£4,087,624), land purchases and sales - including the sale of £24,897,620 worth of mortgaged land (without repaying the mortgage principal). This Land's accounts form part of the county council's consolidated group accounts, which are subject to audit by the county council's local auditor. Therefore, This Land's draft accounts and related documents etc. all fall within scope of s26 of the Audit & Accountability Act 2014, and are subject to inspection by interested parties.
- In July 2024, Dr Moir must have approved, and is ultimately responsible for the recommendation of his Executive Director of Finance and Resources, Mr Michael Hudson, to provide This Land Ltd with a further £6.3 million loan, in spite of the company's record losses and inability to repay at least £7.4 million worth of loan interest during 2024/25 on its existing £113.8 million worth of loans from its sole shareholder. He must have approved of Mr Hudson's recommendation to take £2 million from the authority's reserves to subsidise the £2.374 million in loan interest payments the council owes to the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) in 2024-25 for borrowing the £113.8 million subsequently lent on to This Land Ltd.
- Dr Moir must have approved Mr Hudson's recommendation to allow This Land to defer all loan interest payments to the council for the foreseeable future. Apparently that decision was made at the same time, or even before the recommendation to lend This Land a further £6.3 million.
- Dr Moir must have approved of his Monitoring Officer (Emma Duncan) declining to explain to a local elector how, in her opinion, that commercial loan, funded from "prudential borrowing", did not contravene the government's 2020 ban on councils borrowing from the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) for the principal purpose of obtaining a commercial yield for the council (i.e. "commercial rate" loan interest receipts),
- Dr Moir must have approved of Mr Hudson's and Ms Duncan's decision to conceal This Land's 2025-26 ten-year business plan from the public. That business plan, which county councillors have been discussing in closed session, supposedly explains how the company is to make at least £120 million worth of profits in the next four years to pay off all its loans by January 2029, after making £50 million worth of losses in its first eight years of trading. In January this year, Cllr Ros Hathorn, Chair of the new Shareholder's Sub-Committee, told members that it was not in the public interest for the public to see the plan. This Land's last two business plans, for 2022 and 2023 were both published and are in the public domain. In each case, its cashflow projections proved completely unreliable. The 2023 business plan for example promised that the company would require no further cash injections before 2029. The 2025-26 business plan is already the subject of a Freedom of Information request that will result in a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office if it is not made public by 14th April 2025.
The corresponding information for This Land's senior executives is not available. What is known from This Land's latest available audited accounts (2023-24), is that as the company made record losses of £11.9m for the year, its overall employee costs rose by 23% to £2,636,883 (p34), and Non-Executive Directors' fees rose by 13% to £226,333. This Land Ltd's external audit fees for 2023-24 rose by £2,500 to £102,500. This Land's 2023-24 employee costs included a £39,500 payment for loss of office to the company's former Chief Executive, Mr David Lewis, whose appointment was terminated in November 2023, three weeks after the 2022-23 accounts were published. His successor, Mr David Meek, had his appointment terminated on 5th February 2025, four weeks after the 2023-24 accounts were published. This Land's 2024-25 accounts, when published, may therefore include further loss of office payments.