New top finance officer withdraws from £150k post

A council leader says he is "disappointed" its new chief financial officer has withdrawn from the role, weeks after being offered the job.

Rachael Sanders was appointed by Somerset Council in March but has backed out of the role, which had a salary of about £150,000 a year, for personal reasons.

Somerset Council has struggled to appoint a chief financial officer, and has been using a series of three interim officers, the most recent costing the authority £7,000 a week.

Liberal Democrat council leader Bill Revans said: "There is a shortage of people to do this role all over the country, so lots of councils are struggling to recruit."

Interim officer Clive Heaphy will now remain in his post until the end of March 2027, leaving him responsible for seeing the council through to its next budget.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the council must by law have a chief financial officer who is responsible for overseeing the authority's budget and control its day-to-day spending on public services.

Councillor Diogo Rodrigues, who leads the Conservative opposition group at the council, said there is "instability" at the top of the local authority, which is paying "extortionate amounts of money for temporary agency staff".

"The current temporary finance officer is paid something like £7,000 a week. That's a load more than we would be paying a permanent member of staff," he added.

Revans said: "We inherited a really difficult situation, we declared a financial emergency.

"Being able to solve an emergency takes expertise. If we have to buy in the expertise to solve that problem to make Somerset Council sustainable that's what we will do because, ultimately, the other choice is to go bankrupt," he added.

In March, Revans said the council's financial position remained fragile but it was "now in a recovery phase" from the financial emergency it declared three years ago.

Somerset Council said plans are being put in place to recruit a permanent chief financial officer.

Follow BBC Somerset on Facebook and X. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.