Who wants to leave Wirral Council (at a cost of £146,666)?

                                    

This is a follow up article to What is Wirral Council trying to cover up now? which also ties in to this Freedom of Information request (first refused on s.43 (commercial interests) grounds, then at internal review on s.22 grounds (information intended for future publication).

Just in case Wirral Council decide to start removing documents from their website again, the Chief Officers Report in the name of the Chief Executive Eric Robinson can be read on this website.

However in case you don’t feel like reading 18 A4 pages (although admittedly all 6 have on them is “This page is intentionally left blank”), here’s the quick summary.

The Acting Director of Strategy and Partnerships (currently Fiona Johnstone as Director 1 grade pictured above) wants to leave. As she’s employed under NHS terms and conditions, the NHS redundancy and pension scheme rules apply. The cost of paying her pension early and making her redundant is estimated at £146,666. According to Wirral Council’sPay Policy as this is above the £100,000 threshold, by my reading of it, it’s supposed to go to a vote of all councillors (when or if that happens is anyone’s guess though)!

Her post (which covered matters such as “public health, strategy, Wirral Intelligence Service, Commissioning of Community Safety and the Safer Wirral Hub, Emergency Planning and Communications”) is then deleted. As her post covers communications I’ll declare an interest as a journalist who reports on Wirral Council.

However Wirral Council can’t delete the Director of Public Health (as as far as I know it’s is a legal requirement to have this post) so the Deputy Director of Public Health gets a promotion to Director of Public Health (at Director 2) grade. But Wirral Council doesn’t get to decide on this on its own as it’s partly down to Public Health England.

Then the Deputy Director of Public Health’s position is then deleted too.

But the changes don’t stop there.

The post of Strategic Commissioner: Environment (occupied by Mark Smith pictured above) is also deleted. However a new job of Assistant Director: Place Services is created and Mark Smith becomes the new Assistant Director: Place Services.

In addition to this another new job of Lead Commissioner: Community Safety is created (which presumably will be taking on some of the functions of Fiona Johnstone’s deleted post).

So so far it’s 3 posts deleted and 2 created.

So that’s an annual saving of £152,273 + £109,568 + £122,826 = £384,867.

But the costs of doing this are:

Fiona Johnstone (early retirement and redundancy): £146,666
plus the cost of two new posts
Lead Commissioner: Community Safety Service £116,490
Assistant Director: Place Services £116,490.

Total (one-off): £146,666

Total (ongoing): £116,490 + £116,490 = £232,980 (ongoing annual costs of salaries plus on costs)

Total costs: £379,646 in the first year, then £232,980 thereafter.

However the budget for redundancies and early retirements comes out of capital receipts (sale of land and buildings) which is why Wirral Council are so keen to flog off so many bits of land and buildings in the Borough.

Wirral Council seems keen to fund some of its senior manager’s salaries from money it hopes to receive from the Wirral Growth Company in the future.

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