£10k payrise for Wellingborough Council's managing director

Wellingborough’s full council voted last month to give head officer Liz Elliott an 11 per cent salary rise taking her wage from £89,510 to £99,510.

The move has come about after another reshuffle at the upper echelons of the council due largely to the impending unitary reorganisation and some senior staff moving on.

The council’s director of place Julie Thomas left the council in autumn and the authority now shares a new executive director of growth and infrastructure, Rob Harbour, with neighbouring East Northants and a new chief legal officer will also be employed and shared. Both roles were advertised with a salary of up to £90,000.

The authority says the reshuffle, which leaves six senior management members employed directly by Wellingborough Council, with an £18,000 saving. A report to the council also said Liz Elliott’s pay needed to rise as there was not a large enough pay differential between her managing director position and the new shared directors.

The report said: “The managing director now spends a significant amount of time out of the office, either at county-wide meetings or meetings of north Northamptonshire authorities on design boards, programme boards and transformation boards as well as supporting joint committees ensuring the unitary authority is designed and created in the most effective way to deliver the quality services demanded by residents from vesting day.”

Undisclosed pay rises were also given to other members of the senior leadership team.

The council asked East Midlands Councils – which represents all local authorities in the region – to look at the new structure and benchmark salaries against comparators.

They found that the average wage of a managing director of a similar size council was between £111,000 and £120,000.

This is the latest in a number of senior staff reshuffles at the council since spring 2017 when the authority replaced its chief executive John Campbell with three directors. At the time council leader Martin Griffiths said the shake-up was motivated by financial savings.