Lewisham merges legal, HR and governance director roles

The London Borough of Lewisham is set to scrap its director of law post and replace it with one additionally covering governance and human resources.

A paper put to the council by chief executive Kim Wright also proposed the deletion and reorganisation of other posts, intended to deliver an overall saving of at least £271,000 a year.

The director of law is at present shown as a 0.6 full time equivalent post paid in the range of £108,975-£114,132. A new role of director of law, governance and human resources would be full time but paid in the same range.

Separate roles also due for deletion are the directors of corporate policy and governance and of human resources and organisational development, both of which are at present full-time and paid in the £97,410-£102,669 range.

Ms Wright’s report said there was “a need for changes to the council’s senior management structure.

“These changes will enable a better critical mass of key services to be marshalled together, inject some capacity where it can have most impact and enable different approaches to be adopted, in order to tackle the key issues, so assisting the organisation to modernise and effectively deliver the corporate strategy at pace.”

A Lewisham spokesperson said: “By making changes at a senior level in the council we will continue to ensure our services best meet the needs of residents in Lewisham.

“We also need to continue to spend our money in the most efficient way possible and the plans will provide a net annual saving of nearly £300,000. There are only four posts affected that see people at risk of redundancy.”