...but council chief wants to spend £100,000 on an image consultant (From Daily Echo)

...but council chief wants to spend £100,000 on an image consultant

3:09pm Saturday 25th October 2008

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By Matt Smith »

THE chief executive of cash strapped Southampton City Council wants to splash out £100,000 on a consultant to boost the council’s image.

Brad Roynon wants a “managing consultant” to bring in more experience running its media team which he thinks is not doing a good enough job.

He claimed council media staff were “not familiar with local government and its framework or structures” and that “media staff have relative inexperience in the area of media relations”.

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The consultant – who will cost £15,000 to recruit – will become assistant head of communications and be paid more than head of communications (Liz Kite).

The job, replacing a soon to be vacant lower paid post, will be to review the work of the communication department, draw up an improvement plan and oversee its implementation, whilst also “running the media team”. It is believed a London based agency will be used.

Mr Roynon, the council’s highest paid public servant on more than £150,000 a year, will ask Tory council leaders to sign off the cash on Monday. The council spent £2.3m on publicity last year.

But he has told them: “There is an impression that the council is not always telling its story well in the media and that it could take a more proactive approach to bring this about.”

But Mark Wallace, campaign director at the Taxpayers’ Alliance blasted: “It’s disgusting that with everyone tightening their belts the council wants to splash out on another experienced spin doctor.”

“If the existing media staff aren’t good enough then the job should be paid for by getting rid of some of them.

“People don’t pay their council tax so that spin doctors can tell them the council is good.

“The council should just do a good job in the first place.”

Mr Roynon also wants to create two new assistant chief executives – one for strategy and the other, a £132,000 job to oversee economic development - under a restructuring plan.

Other departments will have to find savings of £200,000 to pay for the changes.

It comes as a panel of six councillors agreed in secret to hand 22 chief officers pay rises by upgrading salary bandings by up to 13 per cent.

Unison branch secretary Mike Tucker said. “Council workers will be concerned at a time when the council is proposing to privatise jobs and make redundancies the number of senior management jobs is being increased.

“When the council is directly providing less services there seems to be no reason to increase the number of senior managers within the council.”

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