Non political, local council, Chief Executives are an invention of New Labour. Do you know what they do? If not, read THIS insight from John Redwood.
But, why is it important that local voters understand what their local council CEO’s does?
Because they now “earn” £100-200k+/year (some earn more than the Prime Minister!), paid for out of your Council Tax.
The rationale is that Councils need to be able to compete with the private sector for the best people. There are two flaws to this proposition. First, very few local council CEO’s come from the private sector. Most are the same public sector managers who have simply been paid more. Second, Council CEO responsibilities are totally different than the private sector. Local Council CEO responsibilities vary from council to council but, there are three, core, statutory duties which are typically assigned to the CEO (summary HERE). Hmmm…these don’t look much like the roles of a private sector CEO to me. If anyone wishes to try and understand what New Labour thought they were trying to achieve in defining the role of the CEO and the governance structure of local councils ……a brief extract from the Local Government Act 2000 can be viewed HERE.
In effect, what New Labour have created is a public sector insider within each democratically elected council. The personal loyalties and career aspirations of the CEO may be aligned more to the hierarchy within the public sector, than to democratically elected councillors. And what a price we are now having to pay for this.
If you don’t know what your local council CEO earns find out by clicking this link to download pdf file (1.5MB) for Local Council Chief Executive Pay
1 response so far ↓
Rose // April 1, 2008 at 12:32 pm |
Read Mr Liddell Grainger’s speech in Westminster Hall on what one CEO did.
You can see the text of his speech both on his web-site and the Bristol Blogger’s.