Edinburgh trams boss pockets a £32k pay rise amid claims of a 'buried bonus' - your views online

"Trams have lost money every second of every day since the first minute they even began thinking about installing them”

Trams boss Lea Harrison took home a salary of £132,025 and received a bonus of £48,895 for the period of January to December 2019

Tram boss bonus

Edinburgh trams boss pockets a £32k pay rise amid claims of a 'buried bonus'

Amanda Mc

Edinburgh council should have no right to give bonuses, £16k could be appreciated more by places like the food bank or the homeless!

David Black

Money is no problem for CEC when it comes to salaries, it is only a problem when it comes to providing services.

Richard Benny Bongartz

They pay him a huge salary while they rip off hard working families for maintenance of buildings that have been neglected for years, calling them environmental improvements.

Linda Wilson

Absolute disgrace. Paid all that money for what? The trams have been a shambles from the start. These salaries are ridiculous.

Peter Anderson

Can anybody tell me how this is justified ? It's a true saying that failure is rewarded.

Jon Clark

It’s a difficult job – a white elephant takes a lot of looking after! Trams have lost money every second of every day since the first minute they even began thinking about installing them and they’ll lose money every second of every day long after they’ve removed them…… your children’s children’s children will be paying for these trams.

Paul Krol

Gravy train not tram, but what is new? This pandemic shows who the real key workers are, sadly mostly forgotten about - no big pay rise for them.

Iain Fisher

A pay rise and bonus to manage a financially unviable project which has reported a potential loss of £12m. How is that performance related pay? Only in local authority can this be allowed to happen, where there is no real concept of money as it just appears from the money tree call bank of taxpayer and government.

Elizabeth McArthur

Seriously, this is Edinburgh council . . . is anyone really surprised?

Henry Campbell Gillan

Greed and lack of moral backbone have no bounds. Why is he getting away with this?

Ken Johnston

So he's paid more than the one in charge of London's buses, tubes and tram. All to run a wee tram line. Not bad. If only his tram line could make a profit without using those of Lothian Buses.

Don O'sullivan

Yet they are struggling with a £12 million shortfall - crazy.

Charlie Murdoch

Yet the staff only got the 80 per cent furlough.

Bill Whyte

The council cry out that they have no funds to carry out basic services, closing care homes and running our city into the ground, but they pay enormous salaries and bonuses to their senior staff, while front line employees are given low pay deals, and let's remember that the council have cut staffing levels too!

Covid Edinburgh

Bar manager hits out at Covid rules after boarding ‘crammed’ train

Michelle Ryan

On Saturday I experienced this. It was my first time back on a train since March 2020. I had high hopes. I was frightened. No social distancing. Some with no masks walking around the train. People sat right next to strangers. People crowded at the doorways stood up. It was like Covid never happened. No one managed this situation. No measures had been put in place to limit the number on train or to ensure social distancing. I’m now petrified of having to go back to the office and experience this daily. Why, ScotRail, have you not got this under control?

Alan Brown

The Transpennine Express has always been a train of last resort. Last time I was on it all but one of the toilets were out of order and they'd put the carriages the wrong way round so only half the train could get to the one apparently functioning bog.

Donald Kilgour

Is he complaining about people crammed in in one business, while not being allowed to cram people in, in his own? Whatever train company it is should be fined for not providing a decent enough service to cater for the restrictions. Of course, that's unlikely to ever happen, so we'll be stuck with this high transmission risk on trains indefinitely.

William Kay

It's passenger responsibility to themselves not to board if they think it's too crowded. Who ever heard of a train company employing staff to keep people off their trains? It's not easy to conjure up trains from nowhere at a moment's notice, especially if said train has been three quarters empty the last 18 months.