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]
3 comments:
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.
Bournemouth 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.
No worries Paul, most would realise you meant that. Not surprised by the 8 grand or the replacement CEO getting more money but I am surprised that they would outsource admin: I would have thought that would be one of the last things to go!
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