Senior City Hall officer handed £150,000 redundancy package

The name of the senior officer at Norwich City Council who left the authority with a £150,000 redundancy package has been revealed.

In March, city councillors approved a redundancy package for one of its senior officers, following a reshuffle of the executive team at City Hall.

The council had said a number of roles had been deleted and new roles created and one person had not been appointed to a role in the new structure.

The council said it did not have any other suitable employment to offer as an alternative to redundancy.

So councillors agreed that officer would get a one-off redundancy payment of £59,386.

And, because they were over 55, they were also entitled to early payment of their pension - a further £93,637.

It took the total cost to £153,014, which the council accounted for in its budget.

The council did not name the officer, or their role, but said they would be leaving in May.

And the council has confirmed that Andy Watt, head of city development services, has recently left the council.

The redundancy came after a shake-up at the top at City Hall following the arrival of chief executive Stephen Evans in January last year.

Stephen Evans, returning officer for Norwich City Council. (Image: Norwich City Council)

A spokesman for Norwich City Council had said, ahead of the redundancy decision: "The chief executive has restructured the top team at the city council, reducing the number of directors from five to three, and increasing the heads of service roles from six to nine to focus on improving service delivery.

"This has resulted in newly created directorates which are not directly comparable with the previous structure.

“Aside from one off redundancy costs the overall restructure of the senior team is largely cost-neutral."

The new senior leadership team was agreed by the Labour-controlled council's cabinet in autumn last year and the new team is now in place.

Along with Mr Evans, the leadership team at City Hall now consists of Louise Rawsthorne (executive director of community services), Annabel Scholes (executive director of corporate and commercial services) and Graham Nelson (executive director of development and city services).