A ROW has broken out over the appointment of a top York council job worth up to £95,000-a-year.

City of York Council is on the lookout for a new "Director of City Strategy" to co-ordinate its policies on housing, land use, transport, planning and culture.

But the council plans to initially advertise and recruit the position internally - to the anger of opposition Labour councillors.

A council spokeswoman said the successful candidate would earn between £81,492 and £95,076-a-year. Coun Dave Merrett, the Labour group leader, said: "We need to make sure we get the best possible candidate for this job, and that means going through a proper recruitment process and advertising it nationally.

"We need to be confident that whoever finally gets the job has been tested against the best applicants in the country - we shouldn't be narrowing it down to such a tiny selection of York council staff to make it a little easier in the short run.

"In the long run it is getting the best candidate that counts."

Labour councillors Merrett, Viv Kind and Tracey Simpson-Laing have jointly "called-in" the original decision to advertise the post internally.

They say the internal recruitment breaches the council's own policies.

But Lib Dem council leader Steve Galloway defended the decision.

He said: "Whenever a chief officer post becomes vacant we always consider how to recruit to it. In this particular case, having looked at the number of experienced chief officers that we have already, we felt it was appropriate to advertise internally first and see whether there was anyone suitable for the position.

"If there turned out not to be we would go for a national advert, but we believe it is in the best interests of council taxpayers to look and see if we already have somebody with the right experience and qualifications."

Coun Galloway said recruiting internally would be both a cheaper and faster procedure, and would ensure the applicants all had good local knowledge.

But Coun Merrett said: "It's best for all concerned if we undertake the proper recruitment process so we can be confident - and the person appointed, internal or external, can be confident - that they were appointed fairly and squarely because they were the best person for the job."

Updated: 09:51 Wednesday, November 02, 2005