Things We Didn’t Know About Island/Southampton Jobs Share

The Southampton paper, Daily Echo, has just picked up on the Isle of Wight / Southampton council director sharing idea.

It’s interesting reading through their article for a number of reasons.

  • We’ve learned in the Echo piece that Southampton will be saving “around £250,000 over three years”, but the Island will only save “some £62,000 a year” = £186,000.
  • Southampton are merging their Housing and Environment departments.
  • The person who held the top job in their Environment departments, Lorraine Brown, received a package worth £338,000 when she left Southampton last summer, that included £204,000 in pension contributions.
  • Their ex-head of Housing got £93,000 redundancy.
  • Southampton will also buy administrative support for work from the Isle of Wight.

What about disclosing IW council redundancy pay offs?
On a connected point, we don’t recall ever seeing the value of packages given to people leaving the Isle of Wight council – eg from above, Lorraine Brown, getting £338,000.

Are we being forgetful?

This raises the question, if it’s good enough for the fine people of Southampton to know how much council directors get paid when they leave, why shouldn’t Islanders also be told when the equivalent leave the Isle of Wight council?

Source: Daily Echo