‘City Will Suffer’ As Councillors Get Double Jobs

City leader Jenny Dawe has been accused of overloading senior councillors with work after handing “two jobs” to some of them. The Lib Dem council leader has almost halved the number of senior councillors leading departments after May’s elections.

That has seen some take on a wide range of responsibilities, leading to claims they won’t have enough time to deal properly with key issues including housing and tackling anti-social behaviour. Many councillors in the ruling Lib Dem-SNP coalition are continuing with full-time jobs following surprise election wins.

The most overworked councillors are said to be finance leader Gordon MacKenzie and health and social care leader Paul Edie. Cllr MacKenzie has been handed responsibility for tackling the council’s £10 million financial crisis, as well as industrial relations and other human resources issues.

Cllr Edie is in charge of housing, trading standards and tackling antisocial behaviour. Councillor Phil Wheeler may also be asked to combine responsibility for transport with environmental matters.

Councillor Ewan Aitken, the former Labour leader of the council, said: “It’s certainly a matter of concern to see the amount of things that are now the responsibility of some councillors. To combine health and social care with housing doesn’t make sense and there are obviously going to be conflicts when finance and human resources are grouped together.”

A senior Labour colleague added: “The big problem for the new administration is the lack of experience, particularly as the Lib Dems lost two of their most experienced people, Tom Ponton and Sue Tritton, in the election. Handing so much responsibility to untried councillors is a recipe for disaster and will come back to haunt Jenny Dawe.

“To an extent she’s been left with no choice. Many new councillors do not have the time to devote to a position of key responsibility. But the amount of work involved in some areas could well become overwhelming and that could have major ramifications in terms of service delivery.”

Cllr Dawe defended her appointments, made with SNP deputy Steve Cardownie. She said the senior councillors would have deputies to share their work. She added: “Under Labour, all sorts of spurious positions were created to give as many councillors as possible special responsibility allowances. With the new system introduced to coincide with proportional representation, councillors are paid a much higher basic salary than before.”

Cllr Edie said: “This is sour grapes from Labour. I’m perfectly happy with what I’ve been asked to do and it’s absolute nonsense to suggest that the talent pool in the new administration is too small. All the committee conveners are already working very closely with their deputies.”