THE interim boss of the West of England Combined Authority received more than £120,000 for less than 10 weeks’ work last year – the equivalent for more than £650,000 per year.
The amount paid to interim chief executive Richard Ennis included salary and any exit payoff, plus expenses. The organisation’s annual draft accounts for 2024/25 show these totalled £4,774 and are understood to be for hotel accommodation.
Mr Ennis left the organisation in June last year. He had been paid £385,246 the previous year – at the time believed to be the largest ever salary in the region for a local government official.
The actual financial burden on taxpayers was higher, auditors say, because WECA’s interim directors were employed through recruitment agencies who charged a commission on top.
Another top officer, interim director of legal services Daniel Dickenson, received £79,686, including expenses and any unspecified exit payment, for the same period as Mr Ennis, with both leaving the organisation on the same day.
Mr Dickenson’s remuneration between April and June last year, when he left, was equal to around £435,000 pro-rata.
WECA audit committee member, accountant and Conservative city councillor Jonathan Hucker said: “Getting a top job at Weca for a few months is like winning the lottery, only it is the long-suffering taxpayer who picks up the tab.
“On balance, I believe Weca does more harm than good.
Interim officers generally command a higher basic wage because they are effectively contractors and their income does not include holiday, sick pay or employers’ pension contributions.
Mr Ennis was replaced permanently last June by Bristol City Council’s chief executive Stephen Peacock, who is on a £205,000 salary.
Days before the accounts were made public, it emerged that Weca spent more than £475,000 in 2024/25 paying off disgruntled staff in former Metro Mayor Dan Norris’s last year in the role.
External auditors Grant Thornton said in an interim annual report that the departures amounted to “attempts to stabilise the organisation” and were “reasonable in context”.
But they warned that continuing to pay so much to part company with senior officers was “not reflective of good value for money in general terms”.
The government lifted Weca out of special measures last year, which it had been put into because of the “legacy of poor relationships between senior officers, and between officers and the former mayor”.
Helen Godwin was voted in as West of England mayor last May.
A combined authority spokesperson declined to comment on the officers’ remuneration.
But the report said there as an “opportunity presented by the arrival of the new Mayor and the effort from all parties to move away from a legacy of poor relationships that has hampered progress in the past”.
Ms Godwin said: “In this new chapter for the West of England, we have turned the page on the problems of the past.”
By Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service