Updated: Wrexham Council to re-advertise for Chief Executive position

Wrexham Council have said they are re-running the appointments process to find a new Chief Executive Officer.

Update 10:10am: We have been asked to make it clear that the report to the Full Council (our write up here) shows that Wrexham Council “required by law to advertise the post nationally” with reference to the below section of the report, and that nowhere does that say that the calibre of local people is not good enough.

In the original article below we pointed out the process was questioned at a previous meeting and Wrexham.com readers were specifically mentioned as not being of ‘right calibre’.

The linked article quotes Council Leader Mark Pritchard’s response to the debate, which to be clear is his opinion rather than Wrexham Council’s process: “If we just put an advert locally within the Wrexham Leader or on Wrexham.com, obviously we wouldn’t get the right calibre of individual. It’s self-explanatory Marc, that is why we cast our net and go nationally and we go as wide as we can.

“The Chief Executive sat up there didn’t see the advert on Wrexham.com or in the Leader.”

“We’re recruiting the Chief Executive – it is the main post within the authority. It is the biggest post here. We have to recruit the right individual and that is why we spend this amount of money to go out and get the right candidate and I don’t want to sound flippant.”

“I meant it when I said if we advertised locally we certainly wouldn’t get the right individual. That’s why we cast our nets wide.”

We are told that the £109,000 – £125,000 salary we quoted below is inaccurate, it is infact £111,191 to £127,513. We are happy to correct this information.

Our source for the £109,000 – £125,000 figure was this page on Wrexham.gov.uk entitled ‘About the Chief Executive’ in the /vacancies_en/ subdirectory, however if we had re-read the initial report rather than rely on the Council site we would have seen the latest correct figure.

Original article below…

The Chief Executive post has a salary range of £109,000 to £125,000 a year, with the Chief Executive also being the Returning Officer for Wrexham and Clwyd South for elections – which commands a further fee on top.

Yesterday was due to see a midday meeting of the politically balanced Appointments Committee, which when we checked at around 11:30am appeared to be going ahead. Later we looked and saw that the meeting was listed as ‘postponed’.

We queried if the meeting had taken place in any form, and if it was known when the meeting was due to reconvene. It appears the meeting did not occur as planned and has been deferred.

Cllr Mark Pritchard, Leader of the Council, confirmed to Wrexham.com: “The position of Chief Executive is to be re-advertised with shortlisting and interview dates to be confirmed.”

In July last year the former Chief Executive Dr Helen Paterson announced she was off to Walsall.

In December we reported that the process to find a replacement had stalled after a person who had been offered the job opted to remain where they were rather than take up the Wrexham based role.

The appointments process was questioned last year in terms of cost, and the lack of local advertising for the role, with you the readers of Wrexham.com specifically being mentioned as not being of suitable calibre.

Going by the timeframes in the previous attempt, if the process is restarted promptly Wrexham Council could be formally appointing a new Chief Executive around April.