Council set to spend over £200k on new senior officers tasked with cutting costs

Recruitment for two new assistant directors would see both arrivals paid six-figure sums, reports Joe Ives, Local Democracy Reporter

Barnet Council is set to spend at least £200,000 extra per year on additional staff tasked with helping to fix its financial woes.

Recruitment for two new assistant directors in the council’s finance department would see both arrivals paid six-figure sums.

The hiring moves have been recommended for approval by the local authority’s employment sub-committee at their meeting on Monday (5th).

In August, analysis by the BBC’s Shared Data Unit found that the local authority is projected to have a budget deficit of nearly £113.5million by the end of the 2027/28 financial year – the highest in London and the second largest of any council in England.

One of the new posts is for an “assistant director of finance (deputy S151 officer)” and comes in direct response to concerns raised in an external assurance review commissioned by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

The review, undertaken by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa), was a condition of the £135m of exceptional financial support (EFS) granted to the council by the government to help it balance its books over the past two financial years.

The council says the external review resulted in “a number of recommendations relating to procurement and internal audit”, especially in response to several identified “key risk” areas.

These included concerns that procurement and commissioning “remain too reactive” in some “high-pressure” council services, such as children’s placements and temporary accommodation.

The result, the external reviewers argued, has had an effect of “limiting Barnet’s ability to control cost, shape markets and reduce reliance on high-cost external provision”.

The government-commissioned report also found that the local authority had “uneven procurement capacity, pipeline management and benefits tracking”, meaning that “service delivery models may not consistently translate into improved value for money, demand reduction or sustainable financial benefits”.

As a result, councillors will also be asked to sign off on recruitment for a new role; an “assistant director” to lead on “financial sustainability programme delivery”.

The local authority argues the establishment of the new financial sustainability team will help “support existing work to deliver savings, prevent demand, and transform services” and comes “as part of the council’s response to its current financial position and the intention to become financially sustainable by 2029”.

This team will also be tasked with identifying “opportunities for improvement through staff engagement” in a bid to “keep teams and managers focused on closing the budget gap each year”.

The council says that “using existing resources” or hiring external consultants “would be less cost-effective” and “increase the risk of the programme not delivering sufficient results in the timescales required”.

A council report states that, if approved by full council, the new recruit would likely have a grade six annual salary, which means it would be between £104,044 and £126,754 per year.

In addition, another new role is for an “assistant director of finance (deputy S151 officer)” whose salary would be between £100,818 and £122,824, according to council papers.

Both the new hires will report to Deborah Hinde, the council’s executive director of strategy and innovation.

At a cabinet meeting held on 16th September, council leader Barry Rawlings said the the local authority had accepted the recommendations reached from MHCLG’s external review.

Cllr Rawlings, who noted that his administration had already taken measures to fix the local authority’s deficit, said: “Our priority is reaching financial sustainability because everything else we want to do fails without that.”

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