Caerphilly County Borough Council’s interim chief executive will be standing down at the end of the year, it has been announced.
Chris Burns was drafted in to run council services in 2014 in the place of Anthony O’Sullivan – who at the time was suspended because of the local authority’s pay scandal.
In an email sent to councillors, Dave Poole, leader of Caerphilly Council, said Mr Burns will be leaving at the end of his contract on December 31.
He said: “Although Chris will not officially leave the authority until the end of the year, I would like to take this opportunity to formally record my thanks, on behalf of the whole authority, for his outstanding contribution to the organisation over the past three years.
“Thanks to Chris’ steady leadership we have successfully navigated the many challenges and financial constraints that have faced us over recent years. I’m sure you will all join me in wishing him all the best for the future.”
A special council meeting will now take place on Tuesday, December 5, for councillors to discuss who will be the next temporary boss.
A report to councillors has recommended that Christina Harrhy, the council’s corporate director for communities, be designated as interim chief executive for a period of six months.
The pair, together with chief executive Anthony O’Sullivan, were all suspended on full pay in 2013 in the wake of a report from the Wales Audit Office into secret pay rises for around 20 council managers.
The council was unable to reach a settlement with Mr O’Sullivan and his case has now been referred to the Welsh Government for an independent investigation. It is understood that if cleared, he wants to come back to work for the council.
As part of the secret pay deal agreed in September 2012, Mr O’Sullivan saw his salary increase from £132,000 to £158,000, although after details of the increase were leaked to the media, the rise was reduced to £5,000.
Mr O’Sullivan, Mr Perkins and Mr Barnett were later arrested and charged with misconduct in a public office.
All charges were later dropped over a lack of evidence. The trio’s suspensions were later ended and they were placed on voluntary special leave on full pay.
Let’s hope that the next chief executive has absolutely no experience of local government but, instead, has been a manager in private industry. What am I talking about? Pigs will fly first!
You can hope – but I think you have more chance of winning tonights
lottery !!!
You are perceptive, as I do not do the lottery my chances of winning can be said to be 0%, about the same as a private industry manager breaking into the closed shop local government!
£85million on Tuesday, you might be able to pay off the last lot with that amount. You might even have enough left over for a bag of chips. No fish though.
I appeciate your sentiments and agree! I have not bothered with the lottery myself for more than 12 years. I have decided I was not born lucky and have shown to much of a readiness to upset the powerful and influential to aquire wealth through our political institutions.
Nevermind, I will continue to be a thorn in the side of the political class and remain on the side of those ignored by them.
Here’s a thought – with a really big lottery win we could buy out the council and run it as a private concern.
It would then be run efficiently and profitably for the good of all.
(It wouldn’t require much thought to improve on the way its run )
We commentators would all need to win and pool our resources. If memory serves their nerve centre at Ty Penallta cost £29 Million years ago!
In fairness I know several councillors (Labour, Independent and Plaid) that did not agree with this sort of expenditure and were as appalled as I was at the waste of our money that could have provided better services or reduced taxes. Sadly the political class usually wins which is one of the big reasons I vote against the establishment and so have voted UKIP for several; years.
Sadly only a minority of Councillors are willing to speak out ( many more are quite happy to toe the line and claim their expenses ).
I too have voted UKIP as the main political parties seem unable to provide solutions to the problems.
Labour has always been portrayed as the champions of the working class – unfortunately in this day and age this is purely a myth.
We must make Local Authorities and in particular,Senior officers and managers, more accountable and their salaries should be performance related.
In the private sector this is often the case – managers are paid in relation to performance.
However, in Local Authorities managers are paid a fixed salary regardless of how they have performed !
Until this culture is changed nothing will improve.
Liebour forgot about us some time ago. About the time Tony B. Liar got himself into number 10.
The problem we got is all these managers within caerphilly council have had no formal recognised managerial qualification. They work their way through various departments with no real experiance of what they are doing. This wouldnt happen in the private sector. Its about time the council recruited from other areas rather than from within.
Not many council managers leave for jobs in the private sector – for exactly the reasons you state