THE husband of former Waverley Council chief executive Christine Pointer has launched a stinging attack on the council's Lib Dem administration, accusing it of bad management and a short-sighted economics. Bryn Morgan let rip with accusations of "half- truths and partial disclosure" in a letter to The Herald commenting on council leader Gillian Ferguson's budget speech to the council on February 20. As well as questioning the wisdom of enforcing his wife's redundancy, he claimed the council is being run by consultants, contractors and temporary staff while the administration trumpets "savings" on staff costs. Miss Ferguson has responded this week with a letter indicating that she stands by every word in that speech. The forced redundancy of Ms Pointer last May was approved by a narrow vote of the council, opposed by the Conservative group. Mr Morgan, himself a Conservative campaigner, claimed in his letter that Miss Ferguson, "with little more than three years experience as a Waverley councillor, decided that the chief executive, with more than 40 years' experience in local government, was redundant. The Liberal Democrat leadership could manage the council themselves without the interfering input and advice from professional officers who, it seems, did not understand the needs of politics". He maintained that now the Liberal Democrats are desperately seeking a managing director, "or chief executive by another name", to help them out of the "deep hole" that they had dug for the council. Mr Morgan suggested that, unlike in previous years, the hand of experienced finance officers and managers at Waverley was not apparent in this year's budget. "Those days are over, it would seem." Turning to Miss Ferguson's statement that the Liberal Democrat administration had saved more than £500,000 a year on the staffing budget, Mr Morgan wrote that the redundancy costs of the chief executive and the additional direct costs of the "interregnum" management arrangements to cover for her departure alone would probably take years to recoup. "With the imminent appointment of a new managing director, the cost of this political gerrymandering is unlikely to ever break even, let alone save taxpayers' money. "But the situation is even more obfuscated by the fact that Miss Ferguson's team is, indeed, losing Waverley staff. Essential staff. So bad is the situation that several hundreds (yes, hundreds) of thousands of pounds has been, and will continue to be paid to consultants and temporary contract staff to undertake essential council service functions." Planning and development, housing, environmental, leisure and legal services were all mentioned in this connection. Waverley's head of personnel, Richard Wood, addressing the claim that the new managing director would simply be a "chief executive by another name", explained that, following the decision last April to reduce the top management team from five to four, visits had been made to at least half a dozen councils to see how they operate. "We wanted to go for a new team-based collaborative way of working in which all the four directors share responsibility for some operational services." One of the four will be the leader, or "head of paid service", but the roll would be essentially different to that of the former chief executive. Graeme Clark, Waverley's assistant director of finance, said the 'payback' period estimated for Miss Pointer's redundancy costs was 1.9 years. He went on to counter the suggestion that consultants, contractors and agency staff were being used to keep the budget for permanent staff artificially low. Figures for the number of full-time equivalent staff posts in the approved establishment actually showed an increase from 412 to 424 since the Lib Dems came to power in 2003. "Recruitment is particularly difficult in this area and if we have a post that is vacant, we might have to go to an agency. We would not call that using consultants." Every post is monitored and would never be cut then filled by external means, said the officer. And where consultants are used, it would for a special purpose and because Waverley did not have the expertise in-house. Mr Clark attributed the £500,000 a year savings to "genuine efficiency gains in mainly administrative areas". "These savings are still in our budget and will continue into the future," he added. He stressed that the Audit Commission had been "very, very positive" following its annual stringent examination of Waverley's affairs. "They commended us on the way we manage our finances and internal controls." And in a brief reply to Mr Morgan's letter, Miss Ferguson said that the Lib Dem budget was "well considered, perfectly sustainable and financially sound, and delivers another year of below inflation council tax for Waverley." The leader wrote: "The budget was compiled in close consultation with Waverley's director of finance. Officer advice on this budget was that it was sound, sustainable, transparent and in accordance with local government regulations and practice. "I stand by every word I said in my budget speech at the February council meeting and reinforce the fact that Waverley Borough Council continues to be a very well run council, run by a very responsible administration."
