Nearly 60 quango bosses earn MORE than Theresa May – with Premium Bond operator NS&I chief Jane Platt pocketing £50,000 salary increase

A STAGGERING 58 quango bosses are pocketing more than Prime Minister Theresa May – up 40 per cent in the past year.

Figures snuck out by the Cabinet Office yesterday revealed taxpayers picked up the tab for an extraordinary public body gravy train in 2016.

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HS2 paid its chief exec £750,000, while the head of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority pocketed £594,000.

In all the Cabinet Office revealed 58 chief executives were paid more than £150,000 this year, up from 42 in 2015.

And the pay for many has gone up dramatically.

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Jane Platt, the head of Premium Bond operator NS&I hit the jackpot with an annual salary of £270,000, up from £220,000.

HM Courts & Tribunals chief Natalie Ceeney trousered £250,000 – compared with £180,000. The chief exec of the Science Museum Group has shot from £145,000 to £165,000.

Dawn Austwick at the Big Lottery Fund was paid £215,000- up from £160,000.

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Ex-PM David Cameron pledged a ‘bonfire of the quangos’ when he entered Downing Street in 2010, saying it was ridiculous there were 900 separate bodies.

Yesterday’s Public Bodies report showed the number of quangos had fallen to 463 this year – from 468 in 2015.

But campaign group the Taxpayers Alliance said taxpayers would be furious at the rising pay.

Harry Davis, campaign manager at Taxpayers Alliance stormed: “Hard-pressed families expect their money to pay for essential services, not to be squandered on the quangocrat gravy train.

“Some of these positions might be important but it is very difficult to judge with so little accountability and transparency available to the public.”

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He added: “Savings need to be made across the public sector and that means taking a long hard look as to whether taxpayers are getting value for money from those receiving bumper quango pay packets.”

Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer said Government reform had, overall, cut the cost of administering public bodies by £3 billion between 2010-2015.

He said: “This is a fantastic achievement but we recognise that there is more to do.”