Total payouts?????

So I wrote in the last blog post how Donna Hall returned for a few to make sure she got a pay rise for her position and then also her pension of 9%.

There have been much rumoured about how much her "golden handshake" was. This a pay off for going. Not too uncommon. The council will never say what the pay off was citing personal information is just that personal, and to be fair they have a point. I would argue if a pay off is over a certain amount private businesses have to disclose it to their shareholders. The people are just like those shareholders.

However, I recognise I would not be told the info but then over the years there have been many people paid off with massive pay off in 2018. Rumoured that he was paid nearly a million quid, as he knew so much as he had been there decades. So knowing Donna how I do I knew she would want to get more than him. Just typical of her.

 Then we have Linda.....I can't remember her name, who was the former head of legal services. She too was paid off. So was the head of the PR dept who got the infamous TV programme Don't blame the council - who also got paid off. I mean Gee if you want to make a shed load of money go and work for Wigan Council - cock up and then get sacked and then ask for a shed load of money to keep your gob shut like the ones mentioned here in this blog.

So I was thinking how much has the Council paid off in "Gag money" over the time Donna Hall was Chief Executive?

Here is my Freedom of Information request. 

I request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act. I request the following 1/ During the period of Donna Hall time as a Chief Executive, what was the total number of staff graded G14 or above (inc Directors and Assistant Directors) that left the Council’s employment having signed a non-disclosure agreement/ confidentiality agreement with the Council? 2/ What was the total figure of money provided to be paid to those staff referred to be in 1 above, in the said agreements?
 3/ How many of the said staff referred to in 1 above had their employment terminated on the date of the said agreement ( that is, without notice)?

This was the other day. Today  the council have come back with this response

Although the Council has entered into settlement agreements, details are retained on the individual employee’s files, we do not hold a central record. To obtain the information the Council would need to examine the files of all employees who have left since April 2012 to see (i) their grade (ii) whether a settlement agreement exists (iii) if it contains a NDA / confidentiality clause (iv) if so the total cost of the agreement and (v) the termination date.

To do so would take approximately five minutes per file after the requisite time to locate each file and given the number of employees that have left the organisation in the period requested it would take in excess of 18 hours to provide the information.  Therefore, pursuant to s12 of the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) 2000, the Council is not obliged to provide the information. This is because the employee time required to complete the request would exceed the cost limit for complying with a request under FoIA.   

Wow!!! So I only asked for people over a certain grade for this very reason. The highest-paid people. I fully understood the Council could not look at every employee at that time. So the council says it will take 5 mins - reasonable if they had to do every file, which I believe the info is easily available to them without checking. But let's go with their little bull.

They can refuse because this will take 18 hours. So 60 mins in an hour times by 18 hours. That is 1080 mins. div that by 5 mins to check files that means 216 people have been paid off possibly and these are the people on over £80,000. Times that by 216 you get just short of potentially £18m. Wow!!!

Of course, I will be appealing and sending this to the information commissioner after I have appealed the Councils procedure. So I thought the £2.5 million "golden handshake" that is being rumoured pay off was grossly inaccurate but I now wonder why the Council came back to me so quickly and not telling me generic info about the total amount of NDA's for the exec team above a certain grade over a certain period. I do firmly believe over the period I mention the Council paid out over £20 - £25 million and this is why the Council doesn't want to tell us. This is a gross figure that could have been paid for front line services that we could have used for better pirposes.

I will report when we get to the information commissioner and report it here.