Social work boss going to cost council £60,000

The Highland social work chief’s early retirement will cost the council almost £60,000. The arrangements were thrashed out in private at the end of last month’s full council meeting in Inverness.

Harriet Dempster’s position will be advertised this week. She will step down at the end of August at the age of 58, after 36 years of service to the social work sector in Scotland. Councillors voted 45-17 in May to approve her early departure. The vote was forced by the SNP opposition group, which objected to the £57,385 cost of a necessary contribution to the council’s pension fund.

It will be met by “future management savings”.

SNP group leader John Finnie declined to comment yesterday on the individual circumstances of a member of staff, but said: “We believed there was an opportunity for a fundamental review of senior management posts within the council to streamline the many extremely well paid jobs which always seem to be filled at the expense of those who are delivering the services directly to the public.”

Caol and Mallaig councillor Bill Clark, of the Independent Alliance, who backed the SNP on the issue, said he was angry that two comparatively low paid staff at the authority’s Glenurquhart Road headquarters had been informed their jobs were being cut as part of “a review of business support”.

He said: “The job cuts should be at the top of the tree. Managers who are going are getting big pay-offs and great pensions while those at the coal face aren’t. I think it’s appalling.

In March, the council’s chief executive, Alistair Dodds, along with his counterparts elsewhere in the north, agreed to waive their right to a 2.5% pay increase this year in light of “unprecedented challenges” facing the public sector.

He is currently paid £140,112.

Highland Council is continuing a public consultation on its plans for budget cuts to establish where it can save a further £41million over three years in addition to £23million of cuts already agreed.