June 7, 2019 2.24 pm This story is over 57 months old

Ex CEO’s £292k payoff “stinks”, says opposition’s deputy leader

Keith Ireland left the council in November
Lincolnshire County and East Lindsey District Councillor Sarah Parkin.

An opposition leader at Lincolnshire County Council has said people “have a right to be furious” after it was revealed former chief executive Keith Ireland was paid £292,263 for less than six months of work.

Read the previous story here.

Deputy Labour leader at the authority, Councillor Sarah Parkin, said: “It’s a huge amount of money to be wasted by the council at a point we are told budgets are tight and people can’t have the services they want or need.

“The taxpayers of Lincolnshire have a right to be furious about this when you think of what they have had to take over the last few years.

“For us to be cutting the funding that we have had, and to do this as well it just stinks – it’s awful.”

She said discussions would now be ongoing and called for a review into “what we’re doing wrong”.

“We cannot afford for it to keep happening,” she said.

Leader of the council, Councillor Martin Hill, and his former chief executive, Keith Ireland reportedly clashed on a number of issues.

Questions, however, still surround the circumstances of Mr Ireland’s departure after he became the third chief executive to fall out of favour with county council leaders since 1998.

It is unclear whether Mr Ireland was fired, or if he voluntarily stepped down after just four months in the job.

Statements from the council have always maintained it was a mutually agreed split after “a difference of opinion on a number of important issues,” however, which issues they were has not been clarified.

Council leader Martin Hill said the decision to arrive at an agreement with Ireland was considered the most “cost-effective” way to bring the matter to a close.

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