Cuts tsar's pay to be reviewed

The pay of Nottinghamshire County Council's new £110,000-a-year improvement director will be reviewed by the authority's overview committee.

The committee will meet on September 3 to review the £17,425 market factor supplement which will be paid to Mr Greg Michael on top of his £92,000 salary.

Mr Michael, the former DHL managing director, was due to start a three-year contract on September 1 but will not now be able to start until the issue has been resolved.

The decision to pay a salary supplement to Mr Michael was called in by the opposition leader at County Hall, Mr Alan Rhodes.

The assistant chief executive at the county council, Jayne Francis-Ward, said an arbitration meeting took place yesterday to find a resolution with Mr Rhodes, but an agreement was not reached.

Trade union Unison has labelled the decision to pay Mr Michael £110,000-a-year a disgrace.

Mr Mick Burrows, the council's chief executive, said: “Greg Michael, the improvement director, will be responsible for driving the changes we need to make the £150m worth of savings required and ensure we are a more effective and efficient council offering excellent value for money.

“We need this position more than ever before due to the scale of savings we need to make and the number of jobs under threat.

“Every £1m that Greg helps us to save will allow us to protect both jobs and frontline services.

“Greg has extensive commercial experience which will help us drive out savings from the £409m per year that the Council spends with over 9,000 suppliers of goods and services.

“The salary for the post is in line with the advice that we gained from the recruitment agencies that we approached.”