Redundancy comes at considerable cost

West Sussex County Council senior executive staff in what is claimed to be a cost-cutting exercise.

It was widely reported by the BBC and the Tax Payers’ Alliance that the former WSCC chief executive Mark Hammond was one of the UK’s highest-paid council chiefs (earning £232,408 in salary, fees and allowances – even more than the prime minister) who left after a period of ‘extended leave’ and has since picked up a redundancy cheque of £140,000 as compensation – only to land another six-figure salary with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission within just eight months of his redundancy.

Such examples unfortunately give the blunt and bloated Mr Eric Pickles MP (communities and local government secretary) legitimacy when he demands public sector senior executives curb their excessive salaries, even though such generous packages are not extended to the majority of front-line public sector workers currently being made redundant.

Having worked for several local authorities for more than 20 years, I failed to encounter any potential Lord Sugars who had any progressive, dynamic or imaginative leadership to justify such obscene, inflated salaries.

What I found equally galling was when important strategic decisions were required, these executives simply paid external consultants (at additional expense) to recommend the decision these executives are supposedly paid to make.

These same senior executives never stay long enough to implement the strategic changes they recommend.

I just wonder how many librarians, home carers, teachers, youth or social workers and rural bus services may have been funded instead of lining the pockets of senior local authority ‘fat cats’ who appear more preoccupied with their own career progression rather than the citizens they claim to serve.

Some will simply dismiss this letter as the politics of ‘envy’,

but it is about fundamental public service values of accountability, transparency and proportionately which all public servants should adhere to but unfortunately

now seem absent at senior executive levels.

Such shameful examples highlight this Conservative-led council’s perverse priorities – to preserve the rights of the privileged, rich and powerful while content to implement deep cuts to basic public provision affecting the poor and most vulnerable of West Sussex.

I found it morally indefensible how Louise Goldsmith et al can defend such disproportionate (yet exclusive) redundancy packages during such hard times.

DJ Gaylard,

Chichester