14.12.18
Council to spend £4m investigating senior officers who gave themselves 20% wage rise during pay freeze
A council has agreed to allocate nearly an extra £250,000 to an investigation looking into alleged pay rises given to senior officers.
Labour, Plaid Cymru, and Independent members at Caerphilly Council agreed to go ahead with the extra funding of £242,000 over a long-running investigation into the council and its former chief executive Anthony O’Sullivan.
The probe, which began in 2013 and will cost a staggering £4.1m by next year, was dubbed as a “debacle” during a Full Council meeting held on Thursday. The local authority now faces a petition calling for the end of the investigation, reaching almost 900 signatures.
The investigation was opened after O’Sullivan, deputy chief executive Nigel Barnett, and the head of legal services Daniel Perkins, allegedly gave themselves a 20% pay uplift whilst the majority of the remaining council staff faced pay freezes. The Wales Audit Offices declared their pay rises to be unlawful at the time.
All criminal charges against the three were dropped in 2015, and Perkins and Barnett left their post last year, receiving a payout of £300,000. O’Sullivan is yet to reach an agreement and is to remain on special leave, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).
According to the LDRS, at the Full Council meeting yesterday deputy leader Barbara Jones said: “I, like everyone else, am frustrated by situation we find ourselves in as I fully expected would be concluded long before now.”
David Poole, council leader, said he will “never apologise” for making sure the council complies with legislation.
The extra £242,000 will include £134,000 towards legal costs, while £108,000 goes towards O’Sullivan’s salary. The investigation will run up until March 2019.
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Image credit: Geograph