There has been more than a little controversy over the departure of the current Isle of Wight council Chief Executive, Steve Beynon (whose official last day is today).
Last year he was talking publicly about retiring after May’s election, then, all of a sudden, shortly after the recent disastrous Ofsted inspections of a few of the Island High Schools, the council decided his role would be ‘deleted’,.
This left Mr Beynon in the fortunate position of being about to receive money from tax payers, as they said he role was being made redundant. His retirement would have brought no such financial gain.
The council then spread it wide that he would only receive a £13,500 redundancy package, OnTheWight dug deeper to find the figure to actually be way in excess of that.
The CX Dept and Chair of the council says Retirement
In the last few weeks – direct from the Chief Executive’s department – the council’s own official invitation to an “informal evening event to mark the departure” says that “Please join us to wish him well in his retirement”.
Retirement?!
The latest development in the saga occurred at this week’s Full Council meeting. At the end of the meeting, the current Chair of the Isle of Wight council, Cllr Susan Scoccia, invited those present to a drink afterwards to mark the Retirement of Steve Beynon.
Why is the Island paying?
If the Chief Executive’s department is sending out invitations to his retirement party; the Chair of the council is referring to his departure in the same way in a Full Council meeting; and even Beynon himself was talking about it last year – Why are the current Conservative administration happy to see Mr Beynon being given a considerable pay off?
Image: Steven Depolo under CC BY 2.0
