THE chief executive of Worcestershire County Council is retiring early and being handed a ‘golden goodbye’ of £95,000, it has emerged.

Trish Haines, who is stepping down next May at the age of 58, is having her pension fund topped up.

The deal, which has been lambasted as “obscene” by the opposition Labour group, comes after talks with leader Councillor Adrian Hardman over a mutual parting of ways.

Both parties insist she was planning to retire at 60 anyway, with the £95,000 aimed at making up the pension losses for going early.

Your Worcester News can also reveal how the Conservative leadership has rejected pleas to share a new chief executive with another council – but wants the new boss to take a £25,000 pay cut.

The new salary on offer will start at £151,000, compared with the £176,678 Mrs Haines currently gets at County Hall.

The £95,000 top-up comes as the authority plans to cut £98 million from spending by 2017 and lose at least 600 jobs.

Coun Peter McDonald, Labour group leader, said: “The council cannot justify such payments in times of austerity and cutbacks, this is just not acceptable.

“If the chief executive wants to retire it should be at her own cost, not the council’s. It’s obscene.

“The Tories are guilty of double standards.

“On the one hand they are employing more than 700 people on zero hours contracts, sacking hundreds of employees to save money and cutting back vital services.”

A confidential meeting of an in-house panel, called the appointments committee, took place on Monday to discuss Mrs Haines’ departure.

The Tory leadership was concerned if Mrs Haines retired at 60, in September 2015, it would be right in the middle of a series of savage cuts to spending and could “destabilise” the plans.

It is also intent on making a saving with the new chief executive appointment, but at the committee meeting resisted calls to share a boss with another authority.

Coun Simon Geraghty, deputy leader, said: “Trish has been an excellent chief executive and I want to scotch any claims there’s been a fall-out, because there hasn’t.

“It was a mutual decision and the rationale behind it is that we are going into a four-year period, possibly longer, of serious change and we need someone to oversee that.

“The £95,000 has to be balanced against the need to find a chief executive to provide leadership over that medium period, and of course the savings we’ll be making from it.”

Kenny Brown, head of human resources, said it was an “accounting transaction” to compensate for the cost of early retirement to the council's pension fund.

The £95,000 was based on Mrs Haines reaching a certain age in retirement.

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