Nice money if you can get it

Every day of the year Cheshire East Council is paying more than £1,100 for a single employee – £995 plus a 16% agency fee – every day of the year – 365 by my reckoning,

The decision to appoint the interim officer was taken by acting chief executive Kath O’Dwyer in consultation with cabinet members, the chair and vice chair of the staffing committee, the mayor and the council’s political group leaders.

In the report on the agenda of next week’s staffing committee meeting Sara Duncalf, acting HR business partner, states: “The director of governance and compliance is also the monitoring officer and therefore the appointment would normally be made by council. As the next council meeting does not take place until 22 May, there would have been an unacceptable risk to the council in being without a monitoring officer for the period between 1 April and 22 May 2019. There could also have been serious reputational damage to the council.”

Editor: Could I suggest that a more robust recruitment and interview process with previous incumbents may have alleviated the need for this and would serve the council’s reputation more effectively.

Cheshire East Council has been without a permanent monitoring officer since December 2017 when Bill Norman resigned after being suspended for five months.

Dan Dickenson has been acting-director of legal services and monitoring officer up until March 31.

Editor: Would it not have been more cost-effective to extend Mr Dickenson’s period of cover?

The council recently held interviews for a permanent director of governance and compliance.

According to reports, Labour group leader Sam Corcoran told Cheshire Live he was baffled by the decision to appoint a temporary monitoring officer and shocked at the massive wage. Cllr Corcoran said: “Since it was formed in 2009 Cheshire East Council has had eight different monitoring officers.”

“The previous monitoring officer was an internal appointment who had been acting up as monitoring officer for over a year. It seems very strange to remove one monitoring officer from post and then appoint another on a short term temporary contract whilst recruiting for a permanent position. I am shocked that they are paying over a thousand pounds a day for the current role.”

“I note that in a recent survey Cheshire East Council came top in the North West for the number of senior officers earning over £100,000. David Cameron’s stricture that no public official need earn more than the Prime Minister seems to have gone out of the window at Cheshire East Council.”

For more information see the report to the staffing committee.