New post will save money

The move has been criticised by the Labour group at the authority, which has already seen 2,000 people made redundant.

Coun Alan Rhodes, leader of the Labour Group in Notts said: “The decision to grant a £20,000 pay rise to a corporate director makes a complete mockery of the notion that ‘we are all in this together’.”

“We have seen savage cuts to services, mass redundancies, charges to the elderly for services increased in some instances by 46 per cent and 86 per cent.”

“The Tories should be protecting frontline services and addressing the £100 million hole in the budget not awarding pay rises on this scale to their most Senior Directors.”

Both the authority argues that by combining two positions into one, it is actually saving the tax payer £107,000 a year.

Mick Burrows, chief executive at the county council said the authority had already delivered savings of £87 million this year, with over £44 million reinvested to meet increased demand for older people and children’s social care.

“At the same time we have been looking just as hard at opportunities to reduce our running costs, to deliver value for money services,” he said.

“We’ve already reduced our senior management team from 26 to 18 posts saving £850,000. Overall, we’re on target to remove 220 management posts, saving £11.9 million each year.

“We’ve now taken the opportunity to merge two existing posts into one to create a corporate director role. The decision will achieve a saving of £107,000 this year and involves transferring responsibility for the council’s improvement programme and other service areas to the corporate director.”