Taxpayers foot bill as £120,000 civil servant gets £27,000 expenses to travel from Lake District home to London job

By
Charles Walford

Last updated at 7:06 PM on 13th February 2012

Phillippa Williamson received £27,000 'benefits in kind' on top of her six-figure salary

Phillippa Williamson received £27,000 ‘benefits in kind’ on top of her six-figure salary

A £120,000-a-year civil servant is receiving an extra £27,600 a year to cover the commuting costs from her home in the Lake District.

Serious Fraud Office chief executive Phillippa Williamson receives the taxpayer-funded benefits to allow her to spend the working week in London and travel back to Cumbria at the weekends.

She is one of nine SFO staff who are having their commuting costs met by the taxpayer at a cost of more than £72,000 per year, the Telegraph reports.

Ms Williamson’s annual travel costs of £12,600, along with £15,000 to pay for accommodation in the capital are treated as a ‘benefit in kind’.

As well as the benefits and her salary of at least £120,000, Ms Williamson was also paid a bonus of more than £10,000 last year.

She
joined the fraud watchdog initially on secondment as chief operating
officer in 2008. Her arrangements were detailed in the SFO’s latest
annual report.

According
to the Telegraph she had a similar arrangement in her previous job at
HM Revenue and Customs, where she was in charge of the national team for
tax credits.

Edward Garnier, the Solicitor General, also disclosed the travel costs of other SFO staff in Parliament.

‘The travel costs for the chief
executive [last year] was £12,600,’ he said. ‘This was a benefit-in-kind
payment. These payments arise from her home being out of London.

Ms Williamson stays in London during the week but returns to the picturesque Lake District at the weekends, with the taxpayer footing the travel bill

Ms Williamson stays in London during the week but returns to the picturesque Lake District at the weekends, with the taxpayer footing the travel bill

‘For the last financial year in which accounts were submitted on behalf of the SFO, the amount spent on meeting the travel to work costs for those staff with an approved entitlement for reimbursement was £57,880.50.

‘During the period for which the above figure is provided, nine staff are entitled to have the cost of travel from home to work met by the SFO.’

The travel bill for the nine SFO
workers of £57,880.50, plus £15,000 towards for Ms Williamson’s
accommodation, makes a total cost to the taxpayer of more than £72,000.

A
spokesman for the SFO told the Telegraph: ‘There’s nothing improper
about it. I imagine there are other government departments with similar
arrangements.’

Chancellor George Osborne has demanded cuts of 19 per cent over the four years of the Comprehensive Spending Review period.

Ms Williamson has worked at the SFO in London since 2008

Ms Williamson has worked at the SFO in London since 2008

Despite this some civil servants, such as those at the Department for Work and Pensions, saw their bonus pot double.

Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge said recently that government departments needed to develop a clear vision of how they will work with less money.

‘Many departments don’t have a good enough understanding of the relationship between spending and outcomes, and there is not a consistent way to measure this across government,’ she said.

‘We can look at individual examples of the impact of cuts on frontline services but there is no big picture assessment.’

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The comments below have been moderated in advance.

I worked in London for a while for my company and claimed expenses, however, I had to pay tax on every penny I received. I take it this woman is also paying tax on these expenses?

Nobody else in work in Britain is allowed to get paid travel expences too and from the job, so why are our civil, or uncivil servant in this case getting this money, this is a disgrace.

Surely,just like the rest of us, what or where she goes at weekends outside of work is a private matter. The tax payer should not be funding any of the travelling expenses. If she chooses to take a job far from home that is her choice and should not reflect a cost on any of us. This appears to be going on right across the public sector and is taking the p-ss out of all of us. Like most people in the private sector she should relocate nearer the work or change her job or better still pay her own fares,and that goes also for the rest of those milking the nation with unjustified expense claims.

Is there no end to our madness? Get someone who lives nearer. Not rocket science.

If she knew the job was in London when she applied for it then she should cover her own expenses. I pay to get to and from my work, why doesn’t she.

Perhaps David Cameron will tell us why her commuting costs are paid but not everyone elses.

My neighbour was relocated from London to Glasgow for UK Trade and Industry. They paid for relocation package and 12 mths rent while he found a home. All standard you’d say? Not when he spends a minimum of 2 days and nights in London every week, at the same desk he moved from 11yrs ago, and gets time in lieu for travelling time. Oh and he still has his london flat that he rents out for enough rent to cover the morgage and the morgage on his 4 bedroomed Glasgow property, which he paid off in full last month. His wife openly boasts that his expenses pay for their holidays each year. Public spending has needed looking into for some time, especially the expenses packages.

The onus was on me to fund my travel to and from work,and to get there on time.Her expenses are double what some people earn in a year.Gone very quiet Dave,I did not hear you thump the table.

You wont change it. –These Mandarins make up rules to suit themselves. She will on top of this get the London allowance which goes towards her pension.

It’s not real money just the taxpayers money, and the supply will never dry up, the politicians will see to that.

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