Chch City Council senior management redundancies paid

21 January 2004

As part of senior management restructuring last year Christchurch City Council has made redundancy payments to seven staff members totalling $408,500. Further details of these payments will be included in the Council's Annual Report pursuant to its disclosure requirements of the Local Government Act 2002.

Chief executive Lesley McTurk says the City Council has honoured its pre-existing contractual obligations to those staff members who were made redundant as a result of their positions being surplus to requirements, and following their unsuccessful applications for new positions created as a result of the recent restructuring.

“Throughout the restructuring process all affected staff were fully consulted in good faith, and the Mayor and City Councillors have been well briefed and kept informed,” Dr McTurk says. “In any large organisation undergoing a significant change, these one-off costs are to be expected. My mandate from the Council was to make significant changes to the organisation’s design and culture. This has now been substantially achieved at the senior management level and with the new management team coming together, it’s time to consolidate and focus on the core issues facing the Council.”

Background
The new organisation structure was announced in September 2003 for the top two tiers of management at CCC. People in 19 positions were affected by this restructure, and 7 redundancies resulted.

Dr McTurk has previously said the restructuring was needed to align the organisation’s senior positions with its future needs and to enable greater accountability for performance. That was not possible under the structure Dr McTurk inherited under which there were 21 people reporting directly to the former city manager.

The new positions required different skills and experience and Dr McTurk has said that the redundancies which resulted from the restructuring were no reflection on the past performance of those managers or their contribution to the City Council.

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