WELL OVER 100 public servants in Oxfordshire are earning more than the Prime Minister’s £142,000 salary — with many earning substantially more.

Latest figures reveal that more than 224 people at Oxford University are paid more than £100,000, with 75 top-earners at the university receiving in excess of £140,000.

It has also emerged that at least 130 GPs in Oxfordshire are paid in excess of £100,000, with 23 of them earning more than £150,000 and five more than £200,000.

The top earners in the county include Oxford Brookes University vice-chancellor Prof Janet Beer, on £212,000, and Thames Valley Police chief constable Sara Thornton, on £162,756.

Four other members of the Thames Valley force receive more than £100,000 Oxford University paid its vice-chancellor £287,000 last year. However, the salary of the university’s new vice-chancellor, Prof Andrew Hamilton, will not be released until the university publishes its financial statement for 2009-10 in January.

Some of the highest paid people in the public sector in Oxfordshire are employed in local government, with Oxfordshire County Council chief executive Joanna Simons topping the table on £189,158.

County Hall also pays seven other officers more than £100,000 a year.

With public sector workers bracing themselves for significant cuts, further pay freezes and redundancies, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism was commissioned by BBC’s Panorama programme to research salary information from some 2,400 organisations nationwide.

Oxford University spokesman Ruth Collier said: “According to every national league table in 2009, Oxford was the number one university in the country.

“It is the biggest research provider in the UK and is probably the most complex institutionally.

“It does not therefore seem unreasonable that its vice-chancellor should have received in 2008-09 the 11th highest remuneration package of all university vice-chancellors.”

A spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council said: “Local government manages huge budgets and chief executives carry massive responsibility in delivering vital public services such as social care for children and adults, fire and rescue, education, highways and transport.

“There is nothing unique about the salary paid to Oxfordshire County Council’s chief executive. It is similar or lower to that of chief executives at similar local authorities.”

Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: “The figures for Oxfordshire are quite staggering. Taxpayers will be shocked to find out that there are so many high paid staff in Oxfordshire.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that remuneration for senior staff has got out of hand.

“Serious action now needs to be taken to restrain pay across the public sector, and senior staff need to take the lead.”

Three board members of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the JR, Churchill and Horton hospitals, earned more than the PM, with the recently departed interim chief executive earning around £160,000. They are not the top earners at local hospitals. A number of clinicians earn more, but not all of that money comes from the public purse.

Mark Ladbrooke, of the Oxfordshire branch of the Unison health union, said “With wages for the lower paid being held down, there is now a real question whether the priorities are right in the allocation of funding.”

But Abingdon GP Dr Prit Buttar said: “For the last three years I have seen my salary fall. I would need a 20 per cent pay rise to get back to where I was. I wish we could get away from this obsession with doctors’ pay. The NHS gets great value from NHS practices.”

Oxford West and Abingdon MP Nicola Blackwood, pictured, said: “Transparency on public pay may not always be comfortable, but it is crucial to allow taxpayers to hold us properly to account and begin to restore public confidence in government.

“We must focus on attracting good people into public service but we also need to make sure the public are confident they are getting value for money.”

Miss Blackwood said the Government had already announced that former Observer editor Will Hutton would be carrying out a review of public sector pay.

Oxford East MP Andrew Smith said: “For hard-pressed taxpayers, many of these salaries are difficult to justify.

“But we have to bear in mind that employers like Oxford University have to compete in a global market to attract the very best, and while the distinctive charms of Oxford can make up for some lower salaries than in the US, if the gap is too wide, then Oxford loses out.

“We must all ask ourselves as well, ‘who would you prefer to be in charge of your operation: the surgeon who is good enough to command a top salary, or one who isn’t?’.”