Shropshire Star comment: Sensible to take on £50k role
In what can be seen as a sign of the times, and the way councils now see themselves as businesses commanding huge budgets, Shropshire Council is recruiting a commercial investment manager.
The successful candidate will be paid £50,000 a year for a 37-hour week.
The vast majority of people in Shropshire earn less than that, and many earn a fraction of that for the same or more hours. So council taxpayers can legitimately expect the new appointee to offer many bangs for their bucks at a time when the whole council environment is of cuts, savings and hiving off this and that to the voluntary sector.
This is going to be a highly responsible position, then, and one with a target of leading a team to raise more than £8 million by 2023.
The person who lands this role will be managing a series of business investments, with the aim of producing a significant return for the council.
Shropshire Council, as we have known it, is repositioning itself for the challenges ahead by becoming a sort of Shropshire Council Ltd, or Shropshire Council Inc. In doing so, it exposes itself to risk, just as the private sector does.
Its ip&e arm’s-length commercial venture of not so long back was not the council’s finest hour, to put it mildly.
In a move of great boldness, in view of the current retail environment, it has spent more than £51m on buying shopping centres in Shrewsbury, with work beginning soon on a long-term plan to give them a revamp.
It is by no means the only council to branch out into developing a property portfolio as councils across the country look for new ways to generate income.
And then there has been Shropshire Council’s move into the house building business. That is not new locally either, as Telford & Wrekin Council had already done the same.
If this is to be the way forward, councils frankly need people who know what they are doing in the world of business, and are not way out of their depth.
Simply providing services funded by taxpayers does not provide the wider skills needed in the big, bad, commercial world.
The recruitment of a commercial investment manager, and of other staff with business acumen and practical knowledge, makes complete sense.
