THE top-paid council bosses have been named in a "rich list" of local authority pay earning hundreds of thousands of pounds from taxpayers.

West Dunbartonshire Council chief executive Joyce White had a salary of £133,472 while the strategic director of regeneration, environment and growth Richard Cairns receives £115,070.

Chief officer of supply and disruption Angela Wilson is on the same.

Each also had more than £20,000 in pension contributions with Ms White also retaining £8,815 paid out in expenses.

Peter Hessett, Victoria Rogers and Peter Barry, also chief officers for varying departments, are all on an annual income of £96,804.

Laura Mason, chief officer for education and learning, takes home £96,399.

These four chief officers had £18,646 in pension contributions.

But the totals are far below the UK's richest council post, in Guildford, at more than £600,000 salary.

In all, there are 2,759 officials earning more than £100,000 for a country of more than 67 million people. Westminister Council has more than 50 officials on high salaries.

The "town hall rich list" was compiled by the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA), which has the lowest possible grade for financial transparency by the campaigning and journalism website OpenDemocracy.

Questions have previously been raised about the group's connection to 55 Tufton Street, London, where regular meetings take place between right-wing think tanks and groups backing the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum.

The low-tax TPA linked their list to the cost-of-living struggles across the country and said council tax rises should be halted and "wasteful spending" cut.

West Dunbartonshire Council was left with millions of pounds to trim for their budget this year, far beyond the total of officials. Council tax was raised by five per cent.

The tax rises contribute just a fraction of the funding gap left by the SNP Scottish Government and Tory Westminster government.

A spokesperson for West Dunbartonshire said: “Like all other authorities, the salary of our Chief Executive is set nationally, with the remuneration linked to the size of population.

“The Chief Executive is responsible for leading and managing hundreds of services including education, social work and housing as well as 6,000 employees and a revenue budget of more than £358m and multi-million-pound capital investments to deliver regeneration and economic development in the West Dunbartonshire area.

“The council has delivered over £1m in savings as a result of three senior management restructures.”