Job cull leaves town hall facing bumper payoffs to axed staff

Brent Council has been urged to end ‘excessive’ pay offs for senior officers amid fears tax payers are footing thousands of pounds worth of bills.

The news comes after the town hall recently announced a management restructuring resulting in potential redundancies for around 11 of the council’s top brass.

The move is expected to fetch the council around £3m in savings.

But the Liberal Democrat opposition has expressed concern at the amount being put aside for potential payouts.

It has been claimed that a senior officer recently received a pay off of around £140,000 despite only clocking up three years worth of service and that the council has set aside around £900,000 for potential further pay outs.

Gareth Daniel, the council’s former chief executive and Clive Heaphy, the former director of finance are also expected to receive in excess of £100,000 in redundancy payments following their much publicised departures last year.

Cllr Paul Lorber, leader of Brent’s Liberal Democrat group, said: “It is essential that the Labour Administration now takes a grip of the situation and ensures that such expensive disasters do not happen in the future. Putting limits on the level of redundancy in any new contracts is the positive way of protecting the Brent taxpayers.”

A spokesman for Brent Council said they were not aware of a specific redundancy.

He added: “This restructuring is subject to consultation but as it stands will generate approximately £900,000 in savings. These proposals will also have an impact on other parts of the council’s structure and these total savings will generate a net saving of approximately £2.9 million in a full financial year.

‘There may be redundancy and associated costs deriving from the loss of posts where they are currently filled unless alternative employment can be found for the current post holders.

“The actual level of these costs will be dependent on the individual circumstances of those post holders not selected as part of the process and will be based on their contractual entitlements.”