Jacquie McGeachie - interim Assistant Director of Human Resources

Peterborough Lift Lock ( Ontario )

Given the number of staff who are going to have an enforced change of employer Mr Mustard thought his readers might like to know who is running the HR department and the answer is Jacquie McGeachie. She is an interim i.e. only here for now. In future posts we will look at her remuneration at Barnet, PAYE, the HR performance and other interesting topics. Let us look first at where she came from. 

Before Barnet, Mrs McGeachie worked for Peterborough City Council starting in December 05 to some time in or around November 08. She was the interim Head of HR from 27 June 07 until she left. Her "employment", (and how a Head of HR can be anything other than an employee under PAYE is a mystery. It will be a rude awakening for many councils once HM Revenue and Customs finally get their teeth into this area which appears to be a ripe one for collecting extra tax from) was not a direct one with PCC but through Anne Corder Recruitment, an agency local to P'boro. 

Payments were as follows : 

2006/07 £80,144 for about 40 weeks so around £2,000 a week

2007/08 £79,210 for about 35 weeks so about £2,250 a week

It is impossible to be exact as it would take too long to get the paperwork out and it has taken Mr Mustard 6 months and a referral to the ICO to get Anne Corder to release even this info.

What we can say though is that the annual rate of payment was in the area of £117,000 p.a. This of course was the amount paid to the agency. Mrs McGeachie herself will have been paid less than that. Staff agencies are notoriously expensive to deal with and they would have probably been taking between 5% and 25% of the fees leaving Mrs McGeachie earning something in the region of £90k to £110k p.a. Why you would give up what is a huge salary and a 2 mile commute in P'boro, the location of the McGeachie residence, to join One Barnet?

Someone please tell Mr Mustard that she doesn't drive from P'boro to N11 every day spewing CO2 as she goes. If she does, she will of course have a space in the executive section of the car park and won't have to drive round and round looking for a space like normal staff.

So that is the scene set. More on McGeachie tomorrow hopefully, and the day after.

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Not that P'boro City Council is any less stupid than One Barnet though. The footer of the first FOI response was as follows:-

The information supplied to you in response to your request is the copyright of Peterborough City Council and is protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 

Mr Mustard reproduces the relevant part of the Act for you here:

1 Copyright and copyright works.

(1) Copyright is a property right which subsists in accordance with this Part in the following descriptions of work—

(a) original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works,

(b) sound recordings, films [F1 or broadcasts], and

(c) the typographical arrangement of published editions.

(2) In this Part “copyright work” means a work of any of those descriptions in which copyright subsists.

(3) Copyright does not subsist in a work unless the requirements of this Part with respect to qualification for copyright protection are met (see section 153 and the provisions referred to there).

Never one to pass up an opportunity to save council's from their own stupidity Mr Mustard wrote the following to PCC:-

I refer to your claim to have copyright in your reply. I repeat below the first section of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. Are you claiming that your email is an original literary work? or some other copyright work? Please enlighten me.

PCC have seen the light, although they needed another dig in the ribs first, and have amended their FOI footer.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard