£180,000 salary for new Portsmouth City Council chief executive

An extraordinary meeting of the full council will be held on Tuesday (June 20) to appoint a replacement for David Williams who is due to stand down later this summer having held the role since 2007.

A preferred candidate was named by an appointments sub-committee last week with a final decision due to be made at next week’s meeting. The recruitment campaign, which began in March, included the contracting of executive search agency Starfish. As the proposed salary exceeds £100,000 a final vote has to be made by the full council.

‘The appointments sub-committee further recognised that current market conditions would make this post challenging to fill with a candidate with the requisite experience and skills within the council’s normal pay bands,’ a report by Natasha Edmunds, the council’s director of corporate services, says. ‘It was therefore agreed to go to market based on comparable market data.

‘The market pay data selected to determine the salary rate advertised was based on pay benchmarking data from other local authorities that are comparable based on the type of local authority and geographical location.’

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The Local Democracy Reporting Service was told an initial six-person long list of candidates was drawn up in April with each the being interviewed to create a shortlist of three names.

They include council’s chief finance officer Chris Ward as well as the chief executive of Crawley Borough Council, Natalie Brahma-Pearl. This trio has met representatives of organisations across the city with close ties to the council and council staff.

The new chief executive will no longer also hold the same position at Gosport Borough Council which decided not to continue the arrangement that began in 2016. Following the announcement that he was standing down, Gosport Borough Council decided against continuing the arrangement and it will also appoint a separate successor later this month.

As a result of this, councillors in Gosport are scheduled to select their replacement chief executive on Thursday (June 15).