£40,000 pay-off for council chief who quit job after15 months
A SENIOR executive at one of Scotland’s most cash-strapped councils pocketed a £40,000 pay-off after just 15 months in a £105,000-a-year job from which she chose to resign.
Patricia Cassidy received the compensation payment from Inverclyde Council – which is facing budget cuts of up to £40 million in the next three years.
And just six months later Mrs Cassidy was back working in the public sector – in a £100,000-a-year NHS job 50 miles away.
Mrs Cassidy was appointed corporate director of education, communities and organisational development at Inverclyde in March 2014.
The job involved being the council’s schools boss as well as running the council’s museums and libraries and its human resources and communications departments.
But little more than a year later, in June 2015, she suddenly quit – with immediate effect and without working her notice.
Chief executive John Mundell said Mrs Cassidy had resigned from the post for unspecified “personal reasons”.
Only now, after the council published its annual accounts for last year, has it emerged that she actually picked up a pay-off of £38,993.
According to Inverclyde’s latest unaudited annual accounts, Mrs Cassidy received the lump sum in “compensation for loss of employment” even though she chose to quit.
Just six months after resigning, Mrs Cassidy was put in charge of Falkirk Health and Social Care Partnership – a joint organisation between NHS Forth Valley and Falkirk Council set up to oversee the merger of health and social work services. The advertised salary for the post was a maximum of £100,730.
Before working at Inverclyde and Aberdeen councils, Mrs Cassidy was head of strategic planning at sportscotland and leisure and cultural services manager at Renfrewshire Council.
Inverclyde chief executive Mr Mundell, who is also retiring, revealed earlier this month that the authority faces a massive funding shortfall which will lead to large cuts in local services. He said that by 2020 an “optimistic” forecast for the shortfall would be £13m and a “pessimistic” forecast £40m.
A spokesman for Inverclyde Council said: “The council reports, through the audited and unaudited accounts, on payments to all senior officers including any contractual payments associated with termination of employment.”
Mrs Cassidy, 55, was unavailable for comment.