COUNCIL officials are being paid thousands of pounds extra to run the authority's trading company, it has emerged.

City of York Trading (CYT) is the city council's money-making arm, which started out in 2011 providing supply teachers and agency care staff within York.

It has recently seen a push to bring in more money for the council, with a turnover target of £10 million by 2018, and is aiming to trade more with private sector firms and with other councils and schools around the region.

But it has now emerged that two senior City of York workers who sit on the trading company's board have been paid thousands for their work with the firm, over and above their council salaries.

Freedom of Information data shows the council’s director of customer and business support services Ian Floyd is paid £6000 to act as CYT's managing director (MD), while the assistant director for customers and employees Pauline Stutchfield gets £3000 for working as the operations director.

A council spokesman said CYT had not appointed a full time MD, but instead asked existing officers to perform the role. The additional payments are made by CYT, and were approved by the company's Shareholder Committee - which some elected councillors sit on - in private meetings in October 2014 and January 2015, when it was also agreed that payments would go up if profits increased.

Cllr Chris Steward, the Conservative leader of City of York Council, said: "CYT is a strong and well-run company and has successfully grown its turnover and profits due to the hard work of staff. In touch financial times it is more important than ever that we grow income streams and CYT enables us to do this.

"As this growth continues it is more important than ever that things are set up correctly and as an administration as well as ensuring the Shareholder Committee is cross party we will also ensure greater openness of documents like meeting minutes."

The newly elected council bosses have demanded a series of changes to make the trading company more transparent.

Following concerns raised at an executive meeting in August, a governance overhaul has been lined-up which will see more outside non executive directors brought in to help run the company, while minutes of the Shareholder Committee will be made public and an annual report prepared for the ruling council executive.