Cheshire East Council spent more than £37,500 on a 'rigorous recruitment and selection process' to appoint its new chief executive.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked for the total costs after listening in to a meeting of the appointments committee in the summer, where it became clear the process of recruiting and appointing a new top boss wasn't going to be cheap.

Today we can reveal the council spent £37,736.84 just on the recruitment process.

Cheshire East Council spent £37,736.84 on the recruitment process to appoint Rob Polkinghorne (Nub News).

This can be broken down into:

• executive search £18,947.37
• advertising £12,894.74
• psychometric assessments and tools £3,789.47
• technical assessor £2,105.26

By law, the council must have a chief executive.

Cheshire East began its search for its new top boss in August when Dr Lorraine O'Donnell announced she was leaving.

During a meeting of the appointments committee in September, it was revealed the costly recruitment process would involve the council first paying a company to select an executive search agency.

That search agency, also paid for by the council, would then work with Cheshire East in the recruitment and selection process for the new chief executive.

Cheshire East's new chief executive, Rob Polkinghorne, took up his post at the beginning of this month.

Rob Polkinghorne took up his post as chief executive at the beginning of January (Cheshire East Council).

In the interim period, between Dr O'Donnell leaving in October and Mr Polkinghorne taking over, the post was filled by David Parr OBE, who was contracted at a daily rate of £1,200.

Agency fees meant the cost to Cheshire East for the interim chief exec was actually £1,380 a day.

Mr Parr worked the equivalent of three days a week.

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