There has been a great deal of talk, much of it erroneous, about a recent appointment of an Executive Director at Walsall Council.

The post is a temporary one which will last around 6 to 12 months to assist in a smooth transition as the council downsizes to reflect a further reduction in Central Government funding of £86 million by 2020.

The details of the appointment were given to a local paper (the Express and Star) and made much of the town’s Conservative Leader and his team  withdrawing from the appointments panel in protest.

They took this action in spite of the Conservatives being part of the appointment panel back in September when the post was awarded to someone who subsequently withdrew forcing the process to start over.

In the article the Conservative Leader made much of the fact that the post should have been filled from within rather than appointing from outside of the Council.

What wasn’t made clear by the Conservatives was the post was in fact temporary for a period of between 6 to 12 months to assist the Senior Management Team move the organisation from where it is today to a much smaller organisation by 2020.

The Council has to downsize as a direct result of a further £86 million reduction in Central Government funding and is part of the current Labour/Lib Dem Coalition’s four-year plan linked to the budget reductions. It would have been difficult if not impossible to have appointed from within due to the nature of the task and the short term of the contract.

Other facts were missing from the article was that there are currently two Executive Director posts vacant along with a recent vacancy for the Head of HR. In cash terms these posts stack up to almost £300,000 pa and were still in the last budget put together by the Conservatives before they lost power following the local elections back in May.

Interim Manager posts are widely used within local government in circumstances where a specific task has to be accomplished and Walsall Council has made good use of this over the years. In fact, since 2011 thirty-six such posts have come and gone at a cost of around £3 million to the authority.

Close examination of these posts will show that many of them stem from a time when the Conservatives ran the Council.