An insight into the world of executive pay at Cambridgeshire County Council is revealed in a new report listing the salaries of all 128 officers who earn over £50,000 a year.

The report also details which roles qualify for up to £100,000 a year in an organisation where 3,334 of its workforce is women and 898 are men.

The current mean salary for the council is £30,049 compared to £29,288 last year.

Twenty-five jobs are now shared with Peterborough City Council, a trend that began when chief executive Gillian Beasley was appointed to a job share role with both authorities.

She, of course, remains the top earner with a salary of £173,596.

Another woman, Rachel Stoppard, chief executive of the Greater Cambridge Partnership is second highest earner. She's paid £167,244. Her pay package is explained as being made up of a basic salary 'and a market factor payment.'

The partnership is an independently operated entity with the majority of its funding coming direct from Government.

Deputy chief executive Chris Malyon is on a salary band up to £150,000 whilst several senior directors earn between £118,000 and £125,000 a year.

At the top end of her earning power, with a salary of up to £105,000, is the director of public health Liz Robin, again a role she shares with Peterborough.

The report reveals that the mean gender pay gap - the difference in average hourly earnings between men and women - is down to eight per cent. Nationally it is 15.7 per cent and last year in Cambridgeshire it was 13 per cent.

The median gender pay - the difference between the midpoints in the ranges of hourly earnings - has also improved. Locally the median gender pay gap is nine per cent against a public sector of 16.8 per cent. Last year in Cambridgeshire the gap was 19 per cent.

But the report acknowledges that the reductions in both mean and median pay is in part due to the closure of the council's catering and cleaning services.

'For the past two years a full review into the gender pay gap has been carried out,' says a report to full council. Appraisals, recruitment and evaluation of grading has narrowed the gap. Ratio of the chief executive's salary to the median salary is 1:6:last year it was 1.7