Cash-strapped Cheshire East Council spent more than £37,500 on a “rigorous recruitment and selection process” to appoint its new chief executive, writes Belinda Ryan.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked for the total costs after listening to the appointments committee in the summer, where it became clear recruiting and appointing a new top boss wasn’t going to be cheap.
Today, we can reveal the council spent £37,736.84 just on the recruitment process.
This can be broken down into:
executive search £18,947.37
advertising £12,894.74
psychometric assessments and tools £3,789.47
technical assessor £2,105.26
By law, the council must have a chief executive, and Cheshire East began its search in August when Dr Lorraine O’Donnell announced she was leaving.
During a meeting of the appointments committee in September, it was revealed the costly recruitment process would involve the council first paying a company to select an executive search agency.
That search agency, also paid for by the council, would then work with Cheshire East in the recruitment and selection process for the new chief executive.
The appointments committee also recommended the new chief exec’s salary be increased, with deputy council leader Craig Browne (Alderley Edge, Ind) saying at the time the suggested lowest starting salary point for a new chief executive of £160,000 was ‘simply too low’.
He said Cheshire West and Chester Council, which is a smaller authority, had just appointed a step-up candidate on just under £167,000, ‘so that immediately tells me that £160,000 is simply too low a starting point for this position’.
In October full council then voted through a salary band of between £170,000 to £190,000 for the post of chief executive.
An amendment put forward by Labour at that meeting to keep the lowest level at £160,000, failed.
Dr O’Donnell’s salary package had been £159,405.
Cheshire East’s new chief executive, Rob Polkinghorne, took up his post at the beginning of this month.
In the interim period – between Dr O’Donnell leaving in October and Mr Polkinghorne taking over – the post was filled by David Parr OBE, who was contracted at a daily rate of £1,200.
Agency fees meant the cost to Cheshire East for the interim chief exec was actually £1,380 a day.
Mr Parr worked the equivalent of three days a week.
I am a critic of CEC. On this occasion I don’t think the cost is excessive and it is about the going rate. Let us hope the new incumbent proves to be good for us all. He needs to sort out the staff he inherits. Let us give him a chance. Hopefully, CEC will give us updates on progress that we can all access!.
Words really do fail me,we all need to wake up and see not only the shortcomings of this council but the total disregard and respect they have for us the tax payers.
If this was a business and they were the board they would all be sacked, they are an utter disgrace, and it is us mugs paying for it,green bin tax a near 5% rise in council tax a multi storey carpark in the middle of a ghost town,the list goes on.