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Wednesday 25 March 2015

Thanet District Council = Thanet Interim Council

Green Party Councillor and South Thanet Parliamentary Candidate, Ian Driver, has called for Thanet District Council (TDC)  to have its name changed to Thanet Interim Council (TIC).
His tongue-in-cheek comment follows a Freedom of Information revelation that the Council’s  10 most senior posts are being carried out by 7  interim managers, or covered by 3 lower graded  staff “acting up” to cover the senior-level vacancies.
The interim posts are Director of Community Service, Director of Corporate Resources, Head of Legal Services,  Open Spaces Manager, Management Accountant, Strategic Planning Manager, Frontline  Services Manager The acting-up posts are Chief Executive, Head of Communications and Head of Financial Services. The cost of the acting up-arrangements is £41,487 per year plus pension contributions. The cosy of employing interim managers is usually in the region of 15% more than the  salary of a permanent employee which assuming an average salary of £70,000 for each the 7 posts would be £ £73,500. This gives a total additional cost of at least £114, 987 to cover the 10 vacant posts.
Said Driver “I have never heard of a council without a full-time permanent senior management team in place.  To have the entire senior officer team made up of interims and acting-up staff  must be unique in annals of local government history. Managing the Council in this way puts TDC at great risk of system failure, catastrophic mistakes and errors and poor service delivery because those covering the posts will have little knowledge or experience of Thanet and the councils procedures.”  

He added “the collapse of the previous senior  management structure was brought about by an ill-conceived  restructuring exercise  which drove out several talented officers. There were also  problems with the reputation and image of the Council following the damning independent Peer Review last year  and appalling political mismanagement by the Labour Cabinet which led some senior officers to move on.   As a result Thanet District Council has been transformed into Thanet Interim Council and  taxpayers have had to pay significantly over the odds to cover the senior vacancies. I sincerely hope that new and capable officers are  quickly employed to turn the Council around following the recent recruitment exercise. 

5 comments:

  1. and you wonder why people are going to vote UKIP, just to get rid of the current bunch... TDC can not get any worse.

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  2. Well said Ian ....and why vote ukip given most if them were tdc tories such as latchford. A better tdc is a reason not to vote ukip. Especially if a farage vote means he disappears and we get heale and shonk...

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  3. Like TDC itself you are dancing around saying TDC is corrupt Ian. Is it?

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  4. Most of the problems of the past 4 years have been the idiot profiles of yourself and Worrow with your partyswitching and bandwagon jumping. I am sure you will get your just desserts on may 7th. You have been a disgrace to |Local democracy

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  5. Funny, I thought most of the problems of the past 4 years were created by McGonigal's restructures. The blind leading the blind. She was laughably put in place by Bayford and Hart. How much has she been paid off? We are still waiting to find out. As a Chief Financial Officer, let alone CEO, she should have been sacked after the secret Transeuropa no pay agreement. No wonder the Council is having to sell assets that were generating rental income for the Council. It is to fill the black holes of failure in the balance sheet of TDC. You can tell how astute the management of TDC are and how well it is run when they do the opposite to what private sector entrepreneurs are doing. Reckless short-term thinking at long-term public expense seems the order of the day. Returning to the Council's "excellent" former Chief Executive, the total meltdown of all the senior management within about 4 years of her taking up the role surely shows what a catastrophe she was, and Bayford and Hart put her there and kept her there.

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