‘Retirement payment’ to chief who didn’t retire
THE highest payment over the year was £573,660 to the departing deputy chief executive of Coventry City Council.
The biggest element in the package Martin Yardley received when he left the authority was an early retirement payment – handed over even though he moved on to another public sector job.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance report said the payout ‘included a loss of office payment of £395,110, the largest in the country, pension payment of £26,559, and salary of £151,991’. When he left in
March last year Mr Yardley was said to have ‘played a pivotal role in the unprecedented regeneration that has taken place, and continues to take place, across the city’.
The council said: ‘Mr Yardley did not receive any redundancy payment. He received the standard pension terms offered to all employees who leave on the grounds of early retirement.’
However Mr Yardley did not retire. Instead he moved to a business development job at the Wellesbourne Campus of
Warwick University, a few miles from the city. Tory opposition leaders on the Labour-controlled council claimed the payment was ‘difficult to justify’.
Other top earners included Fran Beasley – chief executive at Hillingdon London Borough Council – who received £260,513. And deputy chief executive at Hillingdon – Jean Palmer – also received £237,316.
Elsewhere, Rachael Shimmin, chief executive at Buckinghamshire Council was paid £223,909.