Elected Member Briefing - Restructuring of Council Executive and Strategic Leadership Teams

About this Briefing Note

Report by: Thomas Glen, Chief Executive

Date: 3 September 2024

Subject: Restructuring of Council Executive and Strategic Leadership Team

Details

Purpose

To inform Elected Members of changes to the permanent Executive structure following the departure of the Director - Economy, Place and Learning and a re-alignment of line management support and reporting arrangements for members of the Strategic Leadership Team. 

Briefing Information 

As elected members will be aware, Alison Williams left the Council and her position as Director - Economy, Place and Learning at the beginning of August. In keeping with the Council's commitment to effective workforce management and responsible decision-making, we review all vacancies to determine if filling them is essential for fulfilling our statutory duties and achieving our corporate priorities. This approach applies equally to vacancies within the Executive structure. 

I have considered the options available to us following Alison's departure and discussed these with the Executive Team. At the heart of these considerations and discussions is our continued commitment to making us the best leadership team we can be and allowing us to deliver the best possible public services with the resources at our disposal. Linked to the second of these points, the other key considerations in determining how we proceed following the creation of this vacancy, have been around the financial challenges facing the Council and delivering best value to the public, as well as our ongoing transformation programme, including our focus on organisational leadership. 

Given the need to make an early decision and provide certainly to our team and the wider organisation, I have focused on two pragmatic and deliverable options: 

1. the option of re-appointing to the vacated Director's role, or  
2. taking the opportunity to remove the Director's post from the structure and in so doing revise the role of the remaining Director post and re-align support reporting arrangements between this post, the Chief Officer for Health and Social Care and my own role with members of our Strategic Leadership Team.  

Having considered the main options and the benefits of each. I have made the decision to remove the Director of Economy, Place and Learning from our staffing structure and to move forward with a three-person Executive Team consisting of the following posts and postholders. 

• Thomas Glen, Chief Executive 
• Clare Mailer, Depute Chief Executive, redefining Clare's role and remit from that of Director Strategy, People and Resources 
• Jacquie Pepper, Health and Social Care Partnership Chief Officer 

These changes will also see a change in line management support arrangements between members of the new Executive Team and members of the Strategic Leadership Team. The change in line management support arrangements will not change our developing model of the whole Strategic Leadership Team working organisationally to focus on the Council's seven Corporate Priorities and bringing together relevant groupings or Strategic Leads and their teams to focus on each individual priority. 

Whilst Clare's title and role will be Depute Chief Executive, both Clare and Jacquie will continue to deputise for me as acting Chief Executive as and when required. While there will be changes to some elements of the role of Depute Chief Executive from Director, there is no impact in grading or salary structure either at Executive or Strategic Lead level resulting from these changes. The financial savings achieved by the removal of the post of Director of Economy Place and Learning from the Executive Team will contribute to the achievement of the overall leadership savings of £1.6m savings over three years agreed by Council in February. 

This change is in keeping with the principles of the strategic operating model approved by the Finance and Resources Committee last June, with a focus, as described above, on working together across the organisation to deliver on our corporate priorities and vision. The operation and organisation of the Executive and Strategic Leadership Teams is currently under discussion and will continue to develop alongside an ongoing programme of leadership development for the team. 

To reflect the further change in our leadership structure I am pleased to advise that following discussion, David Littlejohn our Strategic Lead for Economy, Development and Planning has delayed the timing of his retirement from the Council and will continue in his current post until early next year. I have however progressed the recruitment for this role and an advert will go live today, 6 September 2024. My thanks to David for this decision and supporting the transition period. 

These changes will be communicated to our staff team today.