PAY scales for charity bosses must be justified and benchmarked against others of the same size, the umbrella body for the sector has said.

After Scotland's best paid charity boss hit back at criticism of his £216,000 salary, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) said it encouraged charities "to be transparent and up front about these things".

Stuart Earley, the chief executive of the animal charity SSPCA, defended his pay arguing it is justified by the results achieved under his leadership.

His basic salary is understood to be in the region of £185,000, making him among the UK's best paid charity leaders and far outstripping that of the heads of most of Scotland's larger charities, as well as the prime minister and first minister.

The revelations have prompted some who make donations to claim they will be cancelling payments to major charities.

Mr Earley described coverage of his pay, which is set independently by a charity remuneration board, as 'frustrating', given that the charity now helps twice as many animals annually as when he took over.

Asked about comparisons with others in the sector he said: "I haven't looked - I don't know what everyone else is being paid. Some people think all charities should be run by people who don't earn anything."

Martin Sime, SCVO chief executive, said: “Charity trustees have to consider a lot of things when setting senior salaries – some jobs involve huge responsibilities over thousands of staff and many millions of pounds. It’s important that pay scales can be justified, often through benchmarking.

“Increasingly charities are trying to limit the gap between lowest and highest paid staff in a move which chimes with the ethos of the third sector. We’d also encourage charities to be transparent and up front about these things. Let’s remember that charity workers don’t earn private sector salaries or have access to the pensions and no-redundancy agreements that the public sector enjoy.”

Revelations earlier this year into UK charity pay scales showed some of the biggest international aid organisations that have been heavily criticised for their senior executive pay levels in the past were not in the top 100 of high earners.

Oxfam and Christian Aid paid less than £125,000 a year to their top executive while other large charities such as Sightsavers and the RSPB with incomes of more than £100 million a year also paid around half of what Mr Earley took home last year.

In Scotland, outwith religious organisations, private schools and universities, arm’s-length council bodies, and philanthropic groups there were 57 members of staff across 15 charities earning more than £60,000 in 2014.

Mr Earley's defence of his pay also sparked criticism on The Herald's website.

One, James Mills, said: "A salary, say at the level of the Prime Minister's, might be sufficient for him with the rest going to help his clients."

Sandy Henderson: "Setting up a professional management structure sets up a conflict of interest between the aims of the charity and the professional aspirations of the paid staff."

Another, Iain Rankin, said: "Better give yourself a pay cut sir or you'll find your job rather harder to justify due to the lower contributions from here on in."

And Cliff McCabe added: "One of the most disturbing things about these chief executives of massive charities is the fact that their income is being partially created for them by ordinary people who volunteer to stand in supermarket doorways and rattle a can."

In a further defence of his salary Mr Earley said his bonus last year was in recognition achieving challenging targets which the charity set for itself in 2009 including increasing the number of schoolchildren reached with education work from 27,0000 to 150,000 by 2014. He says the actual figure reached is now 317,000 a year.