EXETER'S recruiters have raised their collective eyebrows at a recent report which claims the average salary in the city is £28,049.

Jobs search engine, AllTheTopBananas analysed over 555,000 published job adverts in June — 1,533 of which related to the Exeter area.

In addition to reporting an annual average, the report also said that salaries for advertised posts in Exeter had risen by £2,013 since January.

Although the figures varied between companies in the city, recruitment consultants felt that the average salary was far lower than the figure suggested by ATTB.

Samantha Jannedi, a consultant for Manpower, said: “There is always going to be a steady increase in salaries — but I disagree with this figure.

“On average, I would say that it was around £16,000 to £17,000. On the temporary side, the lowest figure would be for a cleaner at a rate of about £5.82 per hour.

“On permanent contracts, a customer service officer in a bank would get around £11,000.

“The highest at the moment would be £23,000 for a trainee executive in the energy sector.”

Alison Vaughan, a director at Lloyd Barnes Accountancy Recruitment based in Exeter, said the average salary taken across the whole range of accounting processes was closer to £20,000 but pointed to the danger of taking a generalised figure.

“Specialists in corporate accounting and taxation are extremely rare. They would achieve £35,000 but a huge number of people are earning between £14,000 and £18,000.

“Unqualified people but with 15 years of experience will get between £18,000 and £20,000.

“But those are general figures and there will always be exceptions.”

Sarah Lane, operations director for Calibre Recruitment, upped the ante to £22,000, but with one or two riders.

She said: “That's taking into account the public sector jobs where they have quite good increments in salary. Generally, people are struggling to get above £21,000.

“We deal with executive and general recruitment and we do see higher salaries, but they are few and far between.

“The executive market is where the prices are higher.”

At the top end she quoted a figure of £80,000 with a few others around £30,000 to £40,000, but those were definitely the exception rather than the rule.

Hannah Ellis Murdock, joint director at the Really Good Recruitment Company, which handles mid-level management to executive contracts, reported lows of £20,000 and a high of £60,000.

Ms Ellis Murdock said: “Exeter has seen tremendous growth and salaries have risen, particularly for specialist management staff.

“There is a greater demand and we're seeing a higher influx of people from elsewhere.”