Royal Mail hands chief executive Moya Greene a 13% rise in her pay package

Royal Mail boss Moya Greene saw her pay increase by 13 per cent to £1.52m in the last financial year as her basic salary was hiked for the first time since she joined the company in 2010.

The disclosure in the group's annual report is likely to spark anger after it cut the number of employees by 5,500 in the year to the end of March.

Ms Greene's basic pay for the period rose to £510,000 from £498,000, after it was hiked by 10 per cent with effect from 1 January. It means her new full basic salary will be £547,800.

Royal Mail said during the period from July 2010 to January this year, its “frontline employees” had received an average salary increase of 11 per cent.

Ms Greene's total remuneration for the financial year 2014/15 also included short-term incentives worth £433,000 - a rise of 12 per cent - and long-term incentives worth £350,000 - 28 per cent lower.

Last year, Ms Greene's pay package was reduced by £250,000 after the chief executive offered to return the amount she received from a relocation package.

Orna Ni-Chionna, chair of the remuneration committee, said: “We increased the salary of our CEO by 10 per cent, effective from 1 January 2015.

”In our view, her role has expanded substantially in complexity since 2010 and in particular since we became a public company; and she had received no increase of any sort in her salary since joining the company in July 2010, almost five years ago.

“Even after this increase, her salary and potential pay remains well below typical levels in companies of comparable size and complexity.

”During that time the majority of our postmen and postwomen have seen salary increases totalling slightly more than this percentage.“

The figures come a week after Royal Mail said annual profits had risen by 6 per cent on an underlying basis to £740m as a squeeze on costs helped offset a lower than expected performance from its parcels business.

The group warned that the parcels and delivery market remained challenging and pointed to the threat from Amazon's delivery network.

Press Association