South Somerset district Council: 162,000 residents...including my family. The ex Chief Exec, Phil Dolan was offered "voluntary redundancy" and paid £569,000 ; he had worked for the council for just 6 (six) years. The sum is made up of his normal salary of £157,000, a redundancy payment of £167,000 (not bad for 6 years) and an extra £239,000** into gold-plated pension scheme and - last and least - £6,000 for lost benefits (** to cover payments that would have been made had he continued working until...eh?). Worse than this princely sum, two others, both corporate directors, received 688 thousand between them: Mark Pollock got £380,000 (£52,000 in salary in 7 months, £112,000 for compensation for loss of office and £164,000 for his pension fund) and David Stapleton 308,000 (£56,000 in salary in 8 months, £121,000 for loss of office and £131,000 in pension contributions). Ignoring the salary that's more than a quarter of a million quid each for just over half a year's work. Anyway, that's the bad bit.
I suspect today's publishing was intentional after yesterday's report of SSDC agreeing 3 million in budget cuts for the coming year; more good news is that they will save £96,000 a year through a decision to share a chief executive with East Devon District Council and the local pool and gym complex - Goldenstones Leisure Centre - will run by a charitable organisation saving £210,000 a year. However, simple maths tells us that 4 years of these trumpeted savings have recently been paid out to these three ex-employees. Would that be "staggering" enough Ruth?
Update Sunday morning: "Can Eric Pickles force councils to do better?" [Link]
I find payments made to local authority workers beyond comprehension most of the time and they have no relationship to market forces because nearly all councils work along similar lines. I saw a note on a clients file last week that he had been paid £8,500 for two days work as a consultant to one council.
YanıtlaSilBournemouth Council scored a spectacular own goal last year when they removed the Chief Executive from office and replaced him with a stand-in only for the Evening Echo to reveal that the stand-in was actually being paid more than the person he'd replaced. Not pro-rata more, which often distorts real earnings, but actually paid more for the same hours! They have just outsourced all of the councils admin duties for 2011-12, it will be interesting to see what impact this has for 2012-13 onwards.
My first line refers to the executive officers, not people actually working in positions where they deal with the public or jobs similar to the one Shy had.
YanıtlaSil