Committee to meet to decide council acting chief executive's pay-off

As councillors consider whether to endorse their agreement to offer Chris Harman £74,000 to quite his post, city council reporter Iain Robinson weighs up the panel's options

TOMORROW at 10.30am, nine councillors will sit down around a table to make one of the most difficult decisions ever put to the city's elected members.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council's human resources committee must have thought the toughest choice they could face would be choosing a new chief executive from more than two dozen candidates who had applied for the £195,000 post.

The selection of John van de Laarschot, Torridge District Council's chief officer, should have been the panel's last act before its dissolution.

But instead their decision, which was supposed to bring stability to the council, unexpectedly plunged the authority into an unforeseen crisis.

Heavily-edited minutes reveal, just a day after Mr van de Laarschot's formal appointment by the council on October 1, the committee was reconvened to deal with a more pressing matter.

Chris Harman, interim chief executive, had not turned up for work on September 30 and it now appears he was already demanding compensation to leave his post without serving his three-month notice period.

The minutes state: "Members discussed the options, as set out in the paper, while expressing concerns regarding the commentary within.

"Members held a lengthy debate, requesting further detail and clarification from the head of human resources regarding a number of points and seeking confirmation of the constitutional authority of the committee to take a decision on the matter.

"Upon being put to the vote, it was resolved the committee delegate power to the head of human resources to agree, within the remit agreed by the committee, a compromise agreement with the chief officer based on contractual obligations within the chief officer's contract of employment, to be signed off by the statutory officers."

This excerpt indicates that, contrary to the outward message at the time that Mr Harman was away on leave, the council was apparently negotiating a pay-out just two days into his absence.

What is less clear is the nature and extent of the "concerns" members raised.

But given that, four weeks later, meetings are still taking place, it would seem those concerns have not gone away.

And the unexpected public backlash against the notion of a pay-off for Mr Harman will not have made the panel's task any easier.

As one council source put it: "The committee is in a difficult position, because they will be damned if they agree to a pay-out, but they will also be damned if they don't and it then leads to much bigger problems later on."

The perceived wisdom among senior councillors appears to be it would be wiser to pay a bit now than risk paying a lot later on, should the council face an employment tribunal.

One cabinet source summed up the mood by saying: "There is a feeling we should do what is in the best long-term interests of the council, even if that means a painful choice in the short-term."

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