Salary and expenses paid to senior IPSA staff

Request

  1. Your salary and any expenses claimed in the last two years including pensions contributions by IPSA and any bonus paid.

  2. The same for your senior staff and Board members.

  3. Who decides your salary and benefits.


Response

IPSA holds the information that you request.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was created by the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, which stated that the IPSA is to consist of one chair and four members. These members constitutes IPSA’s Board, who are supported by an executive body of staff responsible for carrying out the day-to-day functions of IPSA.

You can find out further information about .

Commons determines the daily rate for the members of the IPSA Board, which was set in 2009 at £700 for the Chair and £400 for the ordinary members. The daily rates remained at that level during 2014-15.

IPSA procured advice from recruitment consultants who carried out a benchmarking exercise of remuneration at comparable organisations. Their report and recommendations formed the basis of the remuneration rates. The remuneration for the Chair and Board Members is non-pensionable.

The anticipated time commitment from the IPSA Chair is approximately two to three days per week and from the ordinary Board members two to three days per month, but greater commitment may be needed at certain times.

Salaries paid to IPSA’s Board, and senior members of IPSA’s executive, are published every year in the Annual Report and Accounts (copies of which are available on our website via this link) and are also published on our website at the following address: http://parliamentarystandards.org.uk/transparency/Pages/IPSA-facts-and-figures.aspx. You can also find details of any expenses paid to IPSA’s Board and senior staff on this page.

The FOIA states that information that is accessible by other means is not subject to release. Therefore, as the information you have requested is already available on our website, it is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA (information accessible to applicant by other means).

The Annual Report and Accounts for the 2014-15 financial year are currently being compiled and will be published later this year. Section 22(1) of the FOIA states that information intended for future publication is exempt from release. We have considered whether the public interest in releasing the information outweighs the application of the exemption. We have a clear Publication Policy which states when information will be published. It is our opinion that the public interest is best served by publishing a full list rather than on an ad hoc basis, as in this way a clear and complete set of information is published, avoiding any potential confusion. It is for this reason that the application of the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure at this stage.

Ref:
CAS-23741
Disclosure:
23 July 2015
Categories:
IPSA - STAFFIPSA - FINANCIAL
Exemptions Applied:
Section 21