CITY of York Council’s chief operating officer has promised to bring stability to the council’s senior leadership team after three restructures in as many years.

Ian Floyd, who is also the council’s head of paid service, denied that the latest changes to his senior team represented a failure.

The council has decided to scrap the role of director of people and split the role into corporate director of adult social care and integration and corporate director of children and education.

The authority merged the roles as part of an efficiency drive in 2020.

Labour has accused the council of making “erratic” decisions and claimed the reshuffles in senior management were brought about to offset the costs involved in the early retirement of the council’s former chief executive, Mary Weastell.

Councillor Bob Webb said during a meeting of the staffing matters and urgency committee: “How are senior leadership, how are your colleagues, and how are staff below senior  leadership expected to deliver when there is absolutely no stability nor consistency, when they know the latest dictat or guidance will likely change when a new broom walks through the door in the inevitable next restructure months down the line?”

Addressing Cllr Keith Aspden, Labour leader Pete Kilbane said: “I think it’s shameful we’re in this position. The restructure was a fudge to try to cover up and make savings for how much it cost us to get rid of the previous chief executive, which clearly was done for your political convenience – that’s the auditor saying that, not me – and in the interim it has exposed some of the most vulnerable people in this city to great risk.”

Cllr Aspden, the council leader, said: “I don’t agree with what you have just said. For me, the people directorate structure in front of us is all about making sure that you do bring in that permanence and strong leadership in areas that represent a significant amount of spend, but are also incredibly important services for children and adults.”

Facing questions from Cllr Kilbane, Mr Floyd said: “The need to fill these posts is absolutely crucial. The need for strong leadership is absolutely crucial – the need to hopefully have stability.

“It’s certainly not my intention to come back unless I absolutely had to with a further report on the structure.” 

Mr Floyd denied that the previous decision to merge the heads of children’s and adult’s services had failed.

He said: “I think it’s been successful in terms of the organisation of the council.

“Some of the changes, even in people, have worked very well. 

“There are aspects of bringing people’s services together where you can get consistency, you can get better commissioning and we want to retain that. What hasn’t worked is the fact that somebody left and we weren’t able to recruit.”

Mr Floyd said he believed the council’s children’s services department should ultimately aim to be rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted.

A 2016 inspection found that the service was ‘good’, but a shorter report published in 2019 found there had been a deterioration in the quality of children’s services.