Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney will get a £250,000 annual housing allowance when he starts as Governor of the Bank of England next year, on top of a salary of £624,000, the BoE said yesterday.

The payments to the former Goldman Sachs investment banker will be well above what current bank Governor Mervyn King receives – a salary of £305,000 and a generous pension.

Chancellor George Osborne went to great lengths to attract Carney to Britain, changing the application process and allowing Carney to serve a five-year term rather than the eight-year term that had originally been foreseen.

While Carney’s salary was announced at the time of his appointment, the scale of his housing allowance had not previously been made public.

“The (BoE’s) non-executive directors ... confirmed their agreement to and support for an annual accommodation allowance of £250,000 for the next Governor and his family which had been offered to him prior to his appointment,” the bank said in a statement yesterday.

Carney’s appointment comes at a time when Britain’s economy is struggling to emerge from recession and the Government is cutting most social benefits in real terms. The average full-time salary in Britain is £26,500 a year, though this rises to £34,000 in London.

The bank has explained Carney’s higher salary by noting that the Central Bank will take over most of Britain’s bank regulation next year, and that Carney – unlike King – will not be entitled to a pension.

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