The Conservative Party’s vice-chair has urged the Charity Commission to take action against the Anchor Housing Trust after learning that its chief executive’s pay package totals £420,000.
Jane Ashcroft, chief executive of the Anchor Trust has a basic salary of £293,000, but also received a bonus of £21,975, a car allowance of £13,599, a £3,742 “balancing payment” and £87,945 pension contribution.
Bob Neil, vice-chair of the Conservative Party and its candidate for Bromley and Chislehurst, told The Times that: “It is an abuse of the positions of housing associations to reward someone with private sector levels of pay out of taxpayers’ money.”
He added that it was proof that William Shawcross, chair of the Charity Commission was right to warn about “disproportionate salaries” having the potential to bring the charity sector into “disrepute”
He added: “The Charity Commission ought to consider whether it is appropriate to see this level of reward in the charitable sector. Each case depends on its merits. It is absolutely not what the charity sector ought to be about.”
The Anchor Trust operates 93 care homes in England and provides 22,365 rented retirement properties at 667 locations. It has an annual income of more than £265m and employs more than 8,000 people.
Pamela Chesters, CBE, chair of the Anchor Trust, said: “Anchor is a large and complex organisation working across a number of different sectors and competing successfully with commercial care providers. Our services include specialist residential and dementia care as well as housing to rent and to buy at almost 1,000 locations across England.
“We have a significant development pipeline, including retirement villages, almost 400 properties and more than 250 new care home rooms, and invested £54m in our existing value-for-money housing and care services last year alone. We involved all non-executives in remuneration issues and the chief executive’s remuneration is informed by independent assessments of the market rate.”
The Times also criticised the charity for awarding the chief executive a pay rise when 28.6 per cent of its care homes were failing to comply with Care Quality Commission standards.
Chesters said: “We adopted a more rigorous means of measuring compliance during 2013/14, to include minor concerns raised by our regulator the Care Quality Commission. Measuring like-for-like, compliance (as at February 2015) is now at 85.9 per cent, which is above average for the sector and reflects year on year improvements.”
The Times also pointed out that Ashcroft is paid £44,000 per year for her role as a director of funeral company, Dignity.
Chesters said: “It is very common for senior executives to have non-executive roles on other organisations because of the insight and perspective it gives them.
“Jane’s work with a FTSE 250-listed company only takes five days of her time at Anchor and provides personal development which is beneficial to her role at Anchor.”
