ANOTHER big payout to an executive has been made by Hackney council. Sue Primmer left the Labour regime after just under three years as assistant director, then assistant chief executive, communications & consultation — Hackney is keen on hierarchies – with a package worth almost £107,000.
Asked to explain the huge payout as multimillion council budget cuts loom, an official said: “It is not appropriate to comment on the personal circumstances of individual employees, including former employees, as it would be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998.”
Despite that, Loving Dalston believes it is in the public inerest to reveal that Primmer’s pay in 2009 was £33,666 pa. Usually, an employee on such a salary would have to work for decades to be eligible for a package worth £106,603. Her position has since been filled, so the payoff could not have been attributable to redundancy.
Early in 2010 the independent-school-educated Primmer started work as marketing & communications director at Excelian, a company that says it “services niche vendor technologies”(I don’t understand it, either).
The revelation of £100k+ compensation to a public-relations boss comes after Loving Dalston uncovered the payment of almost £200,000 to another council director who, soon after leaving Hackney, obtained a similar temporary post at Newham council.
* Both these reports are exclusives of this site but a local newspaper, and other outlets, are trying to catch up with Hackney’s leading professional independent news site, Loving Dalston, the site with the stories that others don’t get.
Oh bugger! What went on in Beijing did not (apparently) stay in Beijing! Hence the wads of moolah.
Hackney council is getting quite adept at carrying out these Nights of the Long Knives (although at vast expense to the taxpayer and under the dubious cloak of “data protection”).
http://lukeakehurstsblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/its-bit-sordid-but-itll-all-be-ok-in.html
To the vast majority of council workers, pay-offs like these are unfortunately all too common and considering the huge cuts facing the borough it is outrageous that taxpayers’ money should be spent on such things. If a refuse worker decides they want to leave the employment of the council they don’t get a payoff. So why should a director? Ridiculous and hypocritical.