Nearly £2bn was spent last year on providing 28,754 local authority staff with wages of over £50,000, figures have revealed.

While a reduction in the number of staff paid over £50,000 saw costs shrink by 12.5% on 2010/11, data from the TaxPayers’ Alliance suggests 118 councils increased their expenditure on high earning middle management staff last year.

A total of 266 local authorities decreased the number of officials receiving this level of remuneration, with Manchester City Council shrinking the amount of high earning staff by 410.

Birmingham City Council increased the number of its staff members on remuneration packages in excess of £50,000 by 73 last year, resulting in a total of 648 employees being paid this figure at the town hall.

Figures from the TaxPayers’ Alliance suggest this increase by Birmingham raised spending on high earning staff by almost £5.3m last year, creating a total cost of over £42m.

Councils in the North West made the largest combined reductions to the number of staff earning £50,000 or more, with numbers falling by 922 people.

With 15 more staff being paid over £50,000 than in 2010/11, Northern Ireland became the only region to increase the number of higher paid council employees.

Per 10,000 people in the region, London had 9.6 staff making yearly earnings of more than £50,000 while the East Midlands held only 4.3.

Chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, Matthew Sinclair, said: ‘Taxpayers are still paying far too much for bloated bureaucracies that have been established in too many town halls over the last decade. It is incredible that some councils have even increased spending on high earning staff this year after a decade in which council tax doubled across the country and when every local authority needs to find savings and ease the burden.’

A spokesman for the Local Government Association said: ‘The 12.5% cut in management costs is good news for council tax payers. Councils provide more than 700 local services, from fixing the roads and collecting the bins to caring for the elderly and safeguarding children, we need good managers to make sure those jobs are done well.’