As a consequence of the emerging Corporate Plan, it had already been established that the officer structure and allocation of resources would need to change to ensure sufficient organisational focus was maintained on delivering the ambitions of the current administration. 

The report set out the broad proposals for the new structure and sought approval for the reassignment of the Chief Finance Officer and Monitoring Officer roles.  The restructure would take place in two phases, firstly the restructure of the senior management team (Chief Officers) and secondly the departmental structure.  The draft Chief Officer and departmental structure was attached at Appendix A to the report.

The new structure saw the creation of two new posts, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Place/Climate.  The Deputy Chief Executive post would focus on the transformational change of the Council and would also carry the statutory role of Monitoring Officer.  The Director of Place/Climate would focus on the climate emergency and the place shaping ambitions of the Corporate Plan.  To ensure the two new posts were affordable, there would be a reduction of two existing Heads of Service which would lead to redundancies at the current Head of Service level.  The Assistant Director, Resources post was to be deleted from the new structure and the statutory position of Chief Finance Officer (CFO) would be reassigned to the Council’s Finance Manager. 

Consultation with staff and union representatives had taken place and it was confirmed that most of the responses to date were concerning the process and procedures that would be undertaken and not objection to the proposals. All Heads of Service and senior officers involved had been spoken to on a 1:1 basis and dialogue was on-going.     

Some concern was expressed regarding the hierarchical nature of the proposals, as opposed to a flatter structure, which was more common place, whether the proposal to have a Director responsible for both the green agenda and planning gave rise to a possible conflict and the perceived playing down of finance, given the Council’s current and future financial deficit issues.   Since returning to a single Chief Executive (CE) model, experience had shown that the CE was being drawn into operational issues; the two new posts would remove that call on the CE’s time to enable improved focus on strategic matters.  The CFO post would be focusing purely on finance and be part of the Corporate Core and in other areas, the structure would be flatter.  The current Assistant Director Resources had many other services under his remit and this separation of the finance role was a welcome step.  It was noted that all Members would be briefed on the iESE report following the review of the planning service.          

The appointment process to both new posts would require the establishment of a Member Panel to undertake the interviews, with the support of the Chief Executive.  It was suggested that the Leader of the Council, in consultation with all Group Leaders, appoint five Members to the Panel, made up of representation from all the political parties/groupings on the Council.  Following the appointments to the new posts, departmental structures would be finalised, and further consultation carried out with staff and unions as appropriate.  It was envisaged that the full implementation of the new structure would take in the order of six months to complete; an outline of the timetable was attached at Appendix B to the report.

Whilst it was hoped that the restructure would broadly be cost neutral in terms of on-going staffing costs, it was recognised that there may be one-off costs that would need to be met from reserves in order to deliver the new structure. 

RECOMMENDED: That at the appropriate time in the implementation of the new officer structure, the Chief Finance Officer role be reassigned to the post of Finance Manager and the Monitoring Officer role be reassigned to the post of Deputy Chief Executive.

AND

*RESOLVED: That the Leader of the Council, in consultation with Group Leaders, agree the Members to serve on the Interview Panel for the posts of Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Place/Climate.

*The RESOLVED part of this minute is subject to the call-in procedure under Rule 16 of the Overview and Scrutiny Procedure Rules.