Boomerang bosses' cash bonanza

Aug 16 2009 by Peter Taylor, Sunday Sun

A FORMER council boss has defended himself after he was named in a list of “boomerang bosses” who came back after being axed.

Geoff Paul received a severance payment worth around £175,000 when the new unitary Northumberland authority was created and his job as chief executive of Blyth Valley Council became defunct.

Mr Paul, 50, who has started to draw his pension, has also now set up his own consultancy business.

He was named along with another former North-East council boss, Bob Stephenson, 57, who was made redundant as chief executive of Wansbeck District Council in March. He is said to have received a £240,000 payoff.

Then on April 2 he was put in charge of Wansbeck Life, a regeneration company part-owned by Northumberland Council, which receives £3m of public funding a year, where he is paid around £40,000 for a two-day week.

Mr Stephenson was not available for comment but Mr Paul said: “There were hundreds of people who left local government in Northumberland and we all went under the same severance scheme. We haven’t been given anything we were not contractually entitled to.

“In local government people do get severance pay which is above the national minimum and that helps them when they are in the position of being made redundant.

“I had been in local government for 32 years, since I was 18.

“We thought we were going to be there for another few years doing a job for Blyth Valley and then the Government abolished the council.

“I have set up my own company and am trying to earn a living.

“The thing I felt I was pretty good at in Blyth Valley was creating a great working environment and now I have set up my own one-man consultancy, thinkube, that aims to help organisations and companies take the quality of their customer services to a new level.”