29 July 2018
Green Party councillors say that the City Council has been able to give them no explanation as to why the council’s former head of regeneration was paid £35,000 severance pay and given 2 months' salary beyond his retirement date.
Marsh ward councillo r, Jon Barry said:
“The individual concerned publicly stated that he had retired and the Council has not contradicted this. The Labour leader claims that the pay-off was ‘cost-neutral’, but this completely misses the point that the Council has better things to spend money on. If, as I suspect, the member of staff was simply being paid off to make way for the Chief Executive’s new restructure, then councillors and the public need to be told this. At the moment, the council seems to be hatching too many deals behind closed doors.”
Bulk ward councillor, Tim Hamilton-Cox, who discovered the payments in the city council's annual accounts, added:
"Including the two months' salary, the payments will have cost taxpayers around £50,000. The city council needs to explain why these payments were made when services in the community struggle to find enough cash to survive. Added to the ongoing cost of senior agency staff totalling around £5k per week and the cost of the management restructuring, I will continue to challenge the misconceived spending priorities of the council's Labour leadership."
Cllr Barry asked the following question in Full Council on 18th July, to which no satisfactory answer was given.
"Given cuts in services and increases in charges for green waste and Council Tax, please can you tell me why the recently retired head of regeneration and planning was paid severance pay of £35,000 and, according to the statement of accounts, paid 2 months' salary beyond his retirement date?"
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