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Highland councillors hit back after audit blames them for early departure of £936-a-day education consultant


By Scott Maclennan

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Unrepentant Highland councillors have hit back at an audit which laid the blame for the early departure of a consultant costing £936 a day at their door.

Critics of the appointment of Paul Senior to the role of head of education last year say they always blamed Highland Council over the huge expense, not Mr Senior personally.

However, they were critical of his performance in committee, citing his refusal to address some questions.

The council paid £936 a day for Mr Senior, who was appointed after two unsuccessful attempts to find a permanent head of education.

He left in August after vociferous criticism of the recruitment process by several opposition councillors, leaving the cash-strapped local authority with a bill of more than £70,000 for three months of work.

An external audit by Grant Thornton has now said, however, that Mr Senior’s appointment did not breach council policy.

It also found the appointment had not been made under emergency powers, despite the contract being defended over the urgent need to have an education boss in place during the Covid crisis.

Auditors also said the fact his contract ended early meant it could not tell if the £70,200 paid for Mr Senior represented value for money.

It further suggested that the behaviour of some councillors was to blame for Mr Senior’s departure.

Fort William member Andrew Baxter said: “I think this report has attempted to blame councillors for a problem created by officers and senior administration councillors.

“This was not primarily an attack on an individual as was clearly suggested, though there were clearly failings in how the head of education undertook that role – for example, refusing to answer councillors’ questions in a public forum was unacceptable – and that created much of the anger that followed on from the secrecy that was uncovered as to his appointment in the first place.”

Conservative group leader Andrew Jarvie said: “People were angry at the council’s secrecy, not Mr Senior himself, who would have been unaware of events leading up to this.”

He insisted that ways of addressing the vacancy internally had been available, but “they were seemingly over-ruled by secretive and unnamed individuals.”

He added: “For this council to fail to even meet basic requirements to publish the contract award notice is utterly inexcusable.

“This report misses out one key element. Who was responsible?”

SNP Inverness Ness-side member Councillor Ron MacWilliam agreed, saying: “We now have a report that says the unnamed individuals involved in this excruciatingly overpriced appointment have different memories of what happened when and why, so even the auditors can’t draw a line under it.”

A council spokeswoman said: “The audit found that the decision to appoint a consultant due to previous unsuccessful recruitment attempts, was made by the Member Recruitment Panel before the Covid-19 pandemic affected council operations and was not made under emergency powers.

“No breaches of council policy or the Scheme of Delegation were found.”

“While scrutiny of decision making is an important part of members’ duties, there were comments made in the press, during committee meetings and through social media directed at the post holder by name and his daily rate which could be considered as breaches of the [councillors’] Code of Conduct,” the auditors said.

“It was established from the interviews [with council officers and councillors] that member behaviour was one of the factors in the departure of the consultant.”

The audit found four areas where the council fell below expected standards: not accurately reflecting discussions in minutes; lacking a proper appointment process; not following guidance; and not publishing a notice of recruitment through Public Contracts Scotland.


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