Two top housing bosses have been heavily criticised by Unite for receiving enormous pay rises, while their frontline workers face having their wages slashed.

Mick Sweeney, the chief executive officer of One Housing, has had a £31,000 rise in pay and bonuses, taking his income to £176,000-a-year, while Victoria Stark, Look Ahead’s chief executive officer, pocketed an extra £19,200, giving her a pay packet of £168,300 not including pension contributions.

However, hundreds of staff at One Housing, which operates in London and the south east, face seeing their incomes axed by up to 35 per cent, and at Look Ahead, which provides supported housing and specialised care for vulnerable adults, wages of support staff in Hackney are set to be sliced by more than 10 per cent, following a five-year pay freeze.

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Unite regional officer Nicky Marcus said: "This repellent culture of unbridled entitlement, highlighted by these nauseating pay rises for Mick Sweeney and Victoria Stark, is beginning to mirror the worst excesses of the greedy City elite.

"Bosses are lining their own pockets whilst emptying those of their frontline staff who care for some of the most vulnerable in society. Management cite 'the falling market value' as the excuse to cut workers’ pay when they, themselves create 'the market' by leading the race to the bottom for workers' wages whilst creating a shamefully overinflated 'market' for themselves.

"When workers object and refuse to sign new, significantly worse contracts, they are simply dismissed; draining all the experience from the services with potentially grave implications for the vulnerable clients."

At One Housing, the result of a second consultative ballot on the management’s plans to cut salaries showed that 93 per cent of Unite members rejected the proposals.

Unite members at both One Support and Look Ahead are currently considering taking industrial action over plans to sack them, with an offer of re-engagement on significantly worse terms and conditions.

(CD)