Agenda and minutes

Minutes of the Meeting of the Chief Officer Employment Committee held on 14 October 2019.

With reference to Minute 8, a Member of the Committee disputed whether recommendation (c) had actually being voted on, as he did not recall this to be the case.

Other Members of the Committee were of the view it had been voted.  It was also noted that, either way, the delegation did not affect the outcome.

The Committee were offered procedural advice regarding amendments to minutes but with no proposal being made it was: -  

RESOLVED that the Minutes of the Meeting held on 14 October 2019 be approved and signed as a correct record.

Members may make any declarations of interest at this point but may also make them at any time during the course of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest made.

To resolve that under Section 100 (A)(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public and press be excluded from the meeting for the following item of business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 2 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act.

RESOLVED that under Section 100 (A)(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public and press be excluded from the meeting for the following item of business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 2 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act.

The Committee had met on 14 October 2019 and Members had considered a report on the senior staffing structure, which had recommended a two Executive Director Model from the three options provided.  However, Members at that meeting resolved to request officers to bring back a further option, that being a Chief Executive model.

As a result, the Acting Director of Governance, the Organisational and Development Team Leader and Jaki Salisbury, who had been working as a consultant on senior resources, had produced the report before Members.

The report detailed the salary options applicable to such a role, having undertaken benchmarking.

The report also detailed the human resources implications of adopting a Chief Executive Model.  The Model would see redundancy implications arise and these were detailed within the report. Finally, the proposed recruitment process, job description and person specification were shared with Members for their approval.

Debate ensued and there was lengthy and robust discussion as to why the creation of a Chief Executive Model would result in the Executive Director Posts being deleted, with some Members expressing concern at this implication, particularly given the current significant projects underway under the Directorship of one of the affected posts.

In response, Members were reminded of the views which had been previously expressed by the Executive Director.  The political ambition, and resource positon was not intent on generating considerable further new commercial offers. These projects could be managed at a lower level in the organisation.  Capacity would be increased at the second Officer tier, with a new assistant director already recruited to cover planning and regeneration and plans to recruit a Housing and Well-being Assistant Director post.  The redundancy would long term actually save the Authority money as opposed to keeping an officer in post when work could be covered elsewhere.

Further assurance was offered that the Officer concerned had been spoken with and had no intention of leaving the authority immediately.  Projects would be seen through to an appropriate stage, hand overs would be provided to Assistant Directors and there may be scope to work with the officer effected, in another capacity, in the future.

That being the case, some Members questioned why redundancy was payable at all. Some were also of the view the post had been a fixed term contract.  It was confirmed the post was not a fixed term contract, but did have a review date within the contract, in light of the previous decisions made regarding the role and the longevity of the commercial agenda.  It was noted however regardless, redundancy was also payable on fixed term contracts.  Members were advised in detail of the rules regarding redundancy payments, these were national regulations and contractual requirements and would be applicable if the Authority moved to a Chief Executive Model.  It was noted the pension strain was not paid to the employee and was not an immediately payable cost.

It was confirmed the Peer Review would still be going ahead and some commented it would offer good  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12.