County council poised to appoint chief legal officer as head of paid service

Councillors at Oxfordshire County Council have backed plans to appoint its Chief Legal Officer, Peter Clark, as the authority’s Head of Paid Service.

The move comes ahead of the planned departure of Oxfordshire’s chief executive, Joanna Simons, at the end of September 2015.

A report prepared ahead of the full council meeting on 14 July said that, in the view of the remuneration committee, Peter Clark’s “legal perspective and in particular his organisational and compliance experience as monitoring officer over many years, aptly fit him to this role”.

The committee recommended that Oxfordshire amend its constitution to de-couple the role of Head of Paid Service with that of the chief executive in its Scheme of Delegation and Articles.

Noting the statutory restriction that a Head of Paid Service may not be the Monitoring Officer of the council, the committee also suggested that Nick Graham, Deputy Head of Law and Culture and Deputy Monitoring Officer, should become the council’s Monitoring Officer.

At the meeting the full council agreed – by 57 votes to 0 with one abstention – to these proposals and to notify the Proper Officer of its intention to appoint the Chief Legal Officer as the Head of Paid Service “with a view, at its next meeting, to: (i) receiving the outcome of the proper consultation with members of the Cabinet on this proposal and; (ii) determining whether to proceed with the specified appointment.”