KILEY'S £365,000 BONUS PAY PERFORMANCE TARGETS REVEALED AS 'FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED'

12.01.00am GMT Thu 10th Mar 2005

The way that one of Britain's highest paid public servants is assessed for whether he gets his £365,000 bonus was revealed today by the London Assembly Liberal Democrats following a Freedom of Information request.

The papers reveal that the Commissioner for Transport, who is currently Bob Kiley, has the opportunity to take home more in bonuses than he does in salary. They also reveal that for 2004 he was awarded a 28% possible bonus pay increase that, if all his targets were met, would stand at £365,000 - £47,000 more than his total basic pay.

The bonus targets set for the Commissioner of Transport reveal large gaps in the way in which performance is measured. This includes:-

· Failure to measure derailments, track and signal failures on the Tube, or progress with upgrading the Tube system. There is no measurement of whether passenger numbers have increased.

· No measurements on key bus performance including passenger injuries or fatalities, complaints against bus drivers, or reducing fare dodging

· No measurement on key congestion performance, including PFI targets met by Capita in administering the Scheme, customer satisfaction and reductions in traffic levels across the rest of the capital

In both the years that the Commissioner for Transport has received the bonus, he was awarded 96% of the £285,000 each year available. This gave him an extra £550,00 on top of his basic salary and his accommodation. If the same percentage of 'targets' was reached this year, the Commissioner for Transport could earn more than £350,000 in bonus pay on top of his basic salary of £312,000, accommodation benefits of £102,875 and 'other benefits' of £10,550.

Commenting, London Assembly Liberal Democrat Transport Spokesperson, Lynne Featherstone, said:-

"These 'bonus targets' appear to be vague, selective and fundamentally flawed. Bonus payments are meant to be for achieving more than what is expected and yet the extra cash given to Mr Kiley appears to have been paid for simply doing his job.

"Serious questions must be asked as to whether the targets set for the Commissioner for Transport meet what Londoners expect to be delivered.

"It is astounding that despite congestion increasing across London, derailments and strikes on the Tube, 2,600 people being injured on the buses and a fare dodged every second of every day, Mr Livingstone feels that the Commissioner for Transport is worth paying almost all of his bonus pay.

"These targets blatantly ignore many of the areas where London's travelling public has seen services get worse. Mr Kiley has been given the opportunity to massively increase his take home pay but many Londoners will rightly ask what he has achieved to justify earning this extra cash.

"Mr Livingstone should ask Londoners what improvements they would like to see in London's transport network to merit the Commissioner for Transport earning a bonus cheque of up to £365,000 and whether previous awards of £275,000 a year were justified. If he did, it may well come as a rude shock that London's travelling public does not feel that it is improving as much as he thinks it is."

Ends

The list of correspondence between Transport for London and the London Assembly Liberal Democrats, along with the measures which the Commissioner for Transport is appraised for the bonus are enclosed in a PDF file. To download the full history of the Freedom of Information request please click on the link below

Figures on the total pay awards for the Commissioner for Transport was revealed in a Mayoral answer:-

Bob Kiley's earnings from TfL

Question No: 505 / 2005

We understand that Bob Kiley was paid £700,000, in kind and in cash, by TfL in 2004. Given that his salary was in the region of £250,000, could you provide us with a breakdown which accounts for the payment of the remaining £450,000?

Released at the time of TfL's Statement of Accounts in the summer of last year, the Commissioner's Remuneration for 2003/04 was as follows.

Salary 312,000

Bonus 275,000

Accommodation benefit 102,875

Other benefits 10,550

Total Remuneration 700,925

Salary for 2003 was increased to £300,000 following a salary review by the Remuneration Committee of the TfL Board in 2003/04. The above figure includes £12,500 backdated in respect of the period 1 January to 31 March 2003. Bonus reported for 2003/04 represents bonus in respect of performance in the calendar year 2002. The accommodation benefit is the taxable benefit arising in respect of accommodation provided by TfL to the Commissioner.

Related Link:

Freedom of Information request about the Commissioner for Transport's bonus pay performance targets