new chief executive Christina Harrhy
The new interim chief executive of Caerphilly County Borough Council has admitted there are “difficult challenges ahead”.
Christina Harrhy took up her new position, for an initial six-month period, at the start of the year following the retirement of predecessor Chris Burns.
After being the local authority’s Corporate Director of Communities for the past two-and-a-half years, Ms Harrhy is Caerphilly’s first female chief executive.
She said: “I am both humbled and honoured to be appointed as interim chief executive and I plan to build upon the positive legacy of Chris Burns as I lead the organisation for the next six months.
“The leader of council has clearly set out his ambition and priorities for the next few years and I’m looking forward to working closely with him to move the organisation forward.
“I’ve seen the excellent services that our dedicated workforce provides and I want to ensure we build on this in the future.
“However, I also recognise that we have some difficult challenges ahead due to the ongoing financial pressures, so we need to do things more efficiently and embrace new ways of delivering services.”
Ms Harrhy previously worked at a senior level within Torfaen and Carmarthenshire councils.
She started her local government career as a junior highways technician with Mid Glamorgan County Council, progressing into an engineer post with the newly formed Caerphilly Council following local government reorganisation in 1996.
She graduated with a first class honours degree in Civil Engineering and was invited to become a Fellow Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers – the first woman to obtain the qualification in Wales at the time. She also successfully gained a Masters in Public Administration and studied leadership at Harvard in Boston.
Council leader Dave Poole said: “Christina has an outstanding record in local government and her professional achievements speak for themselves.
“I very much welcome Christina’s appointment and, along with my cabinet colleagues, look forward to working closely with her to ensure Caerphilly continues to deliver services which meet the needs and aspirations of our community in the future.”
Ms Harrhy’s appointment as interim boss will last for an initial six months, as the council still has a chief executive in the form of Anthony O’Sullivan.
Mr O’Sullivan is on special paid leave pending a disciplinary investigation over his role in the senior officer pay scandal.
The council’s deputy chief executive Nigel Barnett and head of legal services Daniel Perkins were given pay-offs worth a total of £298,000 in October last year.
The pair, together with Mr O’Sullivan, were all initially suspended on full pay in 2013 following a report from the Wales Audit Office.
The WAO declared pay rises for around 20 senior bosses, including Mr O’Sullivan, Mr Perkins and Mr Barnett, were unlawful.
Criminal charges were brought, but were later dropped in October 2015.
Difficult times ahead because of their incompetence during the pay scandal and now this Labour run council will make the residents pay for their mistakes.
Having interim Chief Executives is not the answer – time to get the issues finally brought to a conclusion and put a permanent Chief Executive in place.
I agree that their incompetence in dealing with the issues has added to their woes of cutbacks.
But they need to sort themselves out,as they ( like other councils ) will face further,more severe cuts in the next few years.
More fool the residents of Caerphilly for giving this woeful, inefficient Labour council carte blanche to shaft us at every opportunity, the blinkered fools fell hook line and sinker for the 1% council tax bribe in 2017, and now we’re all paying for it with an eye watering 4,5% tax hike. Why oh why do they never learn, and when will they wake up to the realisation that this Labour party no longer represent them.