Kent legal chief faces axe in costs review
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Kent County Council (KCC) legal chief Geoff Wild could face redundancy as part of a major restructuring intended to save £330m over the next four years.
Geoff Wild
The Lawyer understands that as a result of plans laid out in a consultation document entitled ’Bold Steps for Kent’, Wild’s director of law and governance role could be eliminated.
The document includes the stated objective of “offer[ing] our services to the wider public, private, voluntary and community sectors, to generate new revenue and reduce pressure on the Council Tax base”.
During his time at KCC, Wild has become synonymous with the sale of in-house services to generate revenue.
KCC acts for Surrey councils, has an office advising on EU law in Brussels, has targeted Mongolia for inward investment and has teamed up with Geldards to take over public sector legal departments.
In 2008-09 alone this model generated an additional £1.42m in revenues for the public purse.
A KCC spokesperson stressed that the document is “only a consultation” and that “nothing is signed and sealed”.
Wild was unavailable for comment.
Readers' comments (5)
Anonymous | 1-Nov-2010 8:34 pm
What an extraordinary development.
Wild has performed brilliantly turning incompetant local authority legal departments into something half decent. Now they ditch him - madness!
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Gladiatrix | 2-Nov-2010 2:46 pm
He who lives by the sword .............
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Anonymous | 2-Nov-2010 3:43 pm
Another consultant destroying a good business. Those who can do; those who cannot teach and those that cannot do either become consultants. same old story.
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Anonymous | 22-Nov-2010 5:04 pm
Your first comment must surely come from someone who is not a Kent ratepayer or who has not had much contact with Mr Wild's empire. It is symptomatic of the County Council's megalomania that a county council legal department set off to compete with the private sector (as the County have done with buses, too, of course). And while their PR is wonderful, day to day competent administration has gone out of the window.
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Anonymous | 7-Dec-2010 2:05 am
Councils in a region - eg, the old saxon kingdoms - could combine together and share a legal dept. Each council does not need its own lawyers as the issues they face are identical. 40 years ago or so many councils had no in-house lawyers yet worked efficiently.
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