Chief Executive will be missed

With the richly experienced Chief Executive Stephen Barnes being made redundant after many years of service and two new top management officials being brought in, it is clearly all systems go for change at the town hall.
By The Newsroom
Published 18th Nov 2014, 17:00 BST
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If this switch is being introduced principally on financial grounds, it doesn’t make too much sense.

It will save a piffling £80,000 a year: peanuts when Pendle is facing £5m of cuts over three years because of increasing pressures from County Hall and the band of Westminster robbers.

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I have never been slow to praise the council - and Stephen Barnes - for their consistently sensible housekeeping.

But to save a mere £80,000 in this latest internal scheme is, I suggest, pretty difficult to understand.

It is officially claimed in a letter to this newspaper co-signed by Couns Tony Greaves and Joe Cooney that: “The structure at the top will make the council leaner but no less effective”.

It will not be easy to achieve that goal and face the other challenges that lie ahead.

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The powerful self-elected, elite executive will spearhead the efforts but they would be well advised to realise they are not infallible and many of the other 40-odd members have solid, valid and worthwhile opinions that deserve to be heard.

Isn’t that what many people call democracy?

Eric Greenwood

Beaufort Street

Nelson

Related topics:County HallPendle