29 October 2009
Exclusive: Tory chairman in bid to freeze top chiefs’ posts
Heather Jameson
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Conservative Central Office has taken its fight to cut chief executive salaries a step further, and is now urging council leaders not to re-hire their top bosses when the job becomes vacant, The MJ has learned.
Tory party chairman, Eric Pickles, has called on council leaders to ditch the post of chief executive while it is vacant, resorting to just the head of paid service role.
His cajoling is not just for small districts sharing chief executives. At least two major authorities have been approached on the issue – but so far, no council has bowed to Central Office pressure.
A spokesman for Mr Pickles refused to confirm or deny whether discussions of this nature had taken place. He told The MJ: ‘We don’t give a running commentary on all the meetings we have.’
However, it is not far removed from current Conservative policies on chief executives. At the party’s recent conference, communities secretary, Caroline Spelman, mooted the idea of scrapping the post of chief executive in councils with directly-elected mayors – and expanding mayors to more authorities.
In a newspaper interview earlier this year, Mr Pickles said: ‘To a degree, they [chief executives] are being paid like football managers. In a time when members have executive responsibilities, I’m not entirely sure that can be justified.’
This is not the first time Central Office has attempted to put pressure on councils to pursue their own agenda – despite repeatedly reiterating their commitment to localism and allowing councils more freedoms.
During local government reorganisation, Mr Pickles wrote to council leaders to tell them not to go for unitary status. It recently emerged that Ms Spelman urged councils to delay economic regeneration projects until after the general election, in a bid to make a new Tory Government look better.
Honorary secretary of ALACE, Mary Orton, told The MJ: ‘My experience of Conservative councillors is that they are easily independent-minded enough to be able to stand up to a bit of pressure from Central Office.’
One local government expert told The MJ that high-profile experiments of operating without a chief executive had been unsuccessful in the past. Bristol City Council and North Tyneside both re-instated their chief executive posts recently after attempting to run without them.
He added: ‘Council leaders don’t necessarily have the skills to run a large organisation, and I’m not sure they would have the appetite to do so.’
Tory party chairman, Eric Pickles, has called on council leaders to ditch the post of chief executive while it is vacant, resorting to just the head of paid service role.
| ‘To a degree, they [chief executives] are being paid like football managers... I’m not entirely sure that can be justified.’ Eric Pickles, Tory party chairman |
A spokesman for Mr Pickles refused to confirm or deny whether discussions of this nature had taken place. He told The MJ: ‘We don’t give a running commentary on all the meetings we have.’
However, it is not far removed from current Conservative policies on chief executives. At the party’s recent conference, communities secretary, Caroline Spelman, mooted the idea of scrapping the post of chief executive in councils with directly-elected mayors – and expanding mayors to more authorities.
In a newspaper interview earlier this year, Mr Pickles said: ‘To a degree, they [chief executives] are being paid like football managers. In a time when members have executive responsibilities, I’m not entirely sure that can be justified.’
This is not the first time Central Office has attempted to put pressure on councils to pursue their own agenda – despite repeatedly reiterating their commitment to localism and allowing councils more freedoms.
During local government reorganisation, Mr Pickles wrote to council leaders to tell them not to go for unitary status. It recently emerged that Ms Spelman urged councils to delay economic regeneration projects until after the general election, in a bid to make a new Tory Government look better.
Honorary secretary of ALACE, Mary Orton, told The MJ: ‘My experience of Conservative councillors is that they are easily independent-minded enough to be able to stand up to a bit of pressure from Central Office.’
One local government expert told The MJ that high-profile experiments of operating without a chief executive had been unsuccessful in the past. Bristol City Council and North Tyneside both re-instated their chief executive posts recently after attempting to run without them.
He added: ‘Council leaders don’t necessarily have the skills to run a large organisation, and I’m not sure they would have the appetite to do so.’
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