Taxpayers in Malvern Hills & Wychavon districts are set to save at least £120,000 a year following a decision to share a Chief Executive, the Conservatives have revealed.
And they say a councillor who breached Malvern Hills District Council’s Code of Conduct by leaking details of a former chief executive’s redundancy package was wrong to claim the authority is lacking transparency.
The Conservative group in charge of the authority has responded to allegations made by a Liberal Democrat councillor that there was ‘secrecy’ surrounding the recent departure of Chris Bocock Chief Executive at Malvern Hills District Council whose role will now be performed by Jack Hegarty in a shared CEO agreement with neighbouring Wychavon District Council.
The councillor took it upon himself to reveal the redundancy pay, pension and other costs ahead of Mr Bocock’s departure even though the details were on confidential, pink papers that were legally exempt from publication under the Local Government Act 1972.
The previous two posts were each paid a salary of around £110,000 a year plus pension contributions. The new combined post will be paid a starting salary of £118,000 rising to a maximum of £127,500 with equal increments over three years providing additional saving and performance targets are reached. This equates to a significant annual saving of approximately £60,000 for each Conservative led council which they can now put towards vital public services.
Councillor David Hughes, Conservative leader of Malvern Hills District Council, said: “It was always our intention to reveal the full details of the redundancy payment at the appropriate time, and council's are legally obliged to do so in their end of year accounts. However, under data protection rules this information personal to an individual should be protected whilst the negotiations are under way.
“The Liberal Democrat leader claimed we had not been transparent whereas he himself has been economical with the truth, perhaps to score political points. He stated taxpayers would be paying £170,000, however he neglected to advise residents that the actual direct cost to local Malvern taxpayers would be only £17,360 the remaining bulk of the costs will be picked up by central Governments Transformation Fund which was formed for this very purpose to help local authorities reduce costs without burdening local taxpayers"
“We were simply following procedures set out by the Local Government Act and the only reason the information remained confidential at the time was because Mr Bocock had yet to leave. This careless early release of personal details by the Liberal Democrat councillor was clearly intended to undermine the process."
“I would have thought he would at least have the decency to allow a dedicated, respected chief executive like Chris Bocock to leave the building with our grateful thanks for all his hard work before he started a public dissection of his redundancy package, which was well under the maximum allowable by our current policy. All this councillor has achieved here is to show that his political ambitions and posturing are more important than an individual’s right to dignity and that he cannot be trusted with confidential information, which could easily have put at risk an arrangement that will be overwhelmingly beneficial to the Malvern Hills taxpayers and residents.”