GIVEN the controversy about council managers’ pay, Kirklees has picked up a bargain.
The Examiner can reveal that the council is paying its new head the princely sum of £1.
But he is still costing the council more than £7,000 a month.
Kirklees has cut a deal to “borrow” Leeds City Council’s chief executive Paul Rogerson for three days a week while it searches for a permanent head.
Mr Rogerson works for Leeds for the other two days of the week.
And Kirklees has paid him a nominal sum of £1 for legal reasons.
Mr Rogerson continues to collect his full salary from Leeds – about £193,000-a-year, or £16,000-a-month – despite spending only 40% of his working week in the city.
But Kirklees is sending Leeds £7,750 a month to compensate the city authority for the loss of its chief executive three days a week.
The figure is based on 60% of the £155,000-a-year salary of Rob Vincent, who stepped down as Kirklees chief executive at the end of last month.
A Leeds City Council spokeswoman said yesterday that the arrangement was in both councils’ interests.
She said: “It’s a gentleman’s agreement to make sure that neither of the councils are out-of-pocket.”
On August 14 Mr Rogerson will retire from Leeds City Council to be replaced by Tom Riordan, former chief executive of the now-defunct regional development agency Yorkshire Forward.
It was unclear yesterday if Kirklees would start to pay Mr Rogerson his salary directly after this point.
Mr Rogerson, who worked for Kirklees in the 1980s, agreed to step in to the interim role at short notice after Mr Vincent was hand-picked by the Government to take the reins at troubled Doncaster Council.
Mr Vincent took over at the South Yorkshire council on July 1. Kirklees is searching for a permanent replacement but the new person may not be in place until November.
Kirklees Council declined to comment on Mr Rogerson yesterday.
