New Chief Executive Update

According to information we have been given the announcement of the appointment of a new Chief Executive will take place next month:

Council at it’s meeting on 16th June, formally resolved to fill the post of Chief Executive, and to seek initially to do so through an internal recruitment process. The minutes of the meeting will be made available on the Council’s website and hopefully by 1st July.

Should an internal candidate be recruited to the post, an announcement would be made following the approval of the decision by Council at it’s meeting on 14th July.

By way of context, you may be interested to know that as part of it’s deliberations on the 16th, Council also indicated that it wished to see the number of Senior Management Team members reduced from 3 to 2, and acknowledged that should a suitable internal candidate be identified, significant savings would accrue to the Council, by way of reduced recruitment and redundancy costs.

The agenda for the last meeting of the Appointments and Pay Panel on the 20th June was as follows: 

1  To receive declarations of interest under Procedural Rule no 8
2  Apologies for absence
3  Minutes of meeting held on 9 June 2011
To follow
4  Matters arising therefrom (if any)
5  Exclusion of the press and public
The Chairman will move that the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the remaining business because otherwise, information which is exempt information by virtue of Paragraph 1 & 3 of Part I of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, as amended by The Local Government (Access to Information) (Variation) Order 2006, would be disclosed to them.
6  Chief Executive
Subject to Council’s decision on 16 June 2011, to undertake the selection of a new Chief Executive, for recommendation to Council on 14 July 2011.

So it looks as if things are moving fast but somewhat typically BDC councillors are left in the dark about timing as one stated this week that the appointment had been made and would be announced on Tuesday 20th June - obviously, not to the wider world.....however, the same name keeps cropping up! We are sure we will also all applaud the fact that "should a suitable internal candidate be identified, significant savings would accrue to the Council, by way of reduced recruitment and redundancy costs."

Convenient too.

8 comments:

  1. Why are you so concerned about the Council appointing internally from its present staff. It seems like a good way to save money.

    Is this person the facilitator of all the development?

    ReplyDelete
  2. There is concern because best practice as advised by the Local Government Association is that before any Chief Executive is appointed there should be a thorough review of all of the options including the popular use of a joint Chief Executive with a neighbouring local authority in the way that some other Norfolk councils have already done. We see no evidence of that review.

    If the review concludes that it is viable to appoint a Chief Executive then it recommends that a transparent and open recruitment competition is carried out. They make this recommendation in order to prevent criticism of "jobs for the boys" and to attract external candidates who, if successful, would bring new blood and ideas into the post.

    Here in Broadland we have a situation whereby the new leader and the high probability that the Chief Planner will be "appointed" as Chief Executive means that local residents will have the main movers and supporters of the Joint Core strategy in the top two positions. The net result of this is that we lose the opportunity for the Council to take a fresh look at the need for housing in light of the legal challenge of SNUB.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In the minutes of the Appointments and Pay Panel meeting for 9th June it says:
    The Head of Information and Human Resources advised Members that recruitment to the post of Chief Executive was subject to the approval of Council on 16 June 2011. However, due to the tight timescales, it was appropriate for the Appointments and Pay Panel to consider the arrangements for recruitment to the post and approve the job description and person specification ahead of the meeting of Council.

    Why the "tight timescales"? Why the rush? It has been well known for months that Colin Bland was retiring.

    BDC do themselves no favours by their conduct and SNUB appear to be merely the messengers in this instance....

    ReplyDelete
  4. " Transparency and openness "still a priority then.!

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Significant savings would accrue to the Council, by way of reduced recruitment and redundancy costs" - but what about "best person for the job"? How would we know if we got the best person if the pool is only from within Broadland District Council? It is, after all, a very small pool indeed!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Why don't you just name Phil Kirby as new Chief Exec? It's been announced within BDC and all employees have been made officially aware of it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Kathy Kirby would have made a better CE but sadly she died recently. She had a hit song in the sixties about a secret.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Finally we hear the worst kept secret in Broadland. Kirby was nodded in as the Chief Executive using the Leaders usual tactics.
    What is really depressing is that the other council members do not see anything wrong with the way they manipulate the agenda.

    ReplyDelete