Chit chat - Tory objection is redundant

Published Tuesday 29 July 2008 at 17:05 by Tabard

Interesting to see the Tories making merry hell over the redundancy pay given out to recently departed arts council chief exec Peter Hewitt.

Hewitt was given £128,655 severance pay when he completed his fixed-term contact in March.

Now, Tabard would be the first to admit that this seems like a staggeringly large sum - especially after last year’s little funding debacle.

Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt would appear to agree. “This is an extraordinary amount of money to pay out to someone on a fixed-term contract which both he and the arts council knew was going to end anyway,” he huffs. “At a time when it claims it wants to reduce administration costs, the arts council must explain why it is signing contracts of this nature instead of directing money to grassroots arts organisations that are having their funding cut.”

Well, there are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, ACE didn’t sign this contract ‘at a time when it claims it wants to reduce administration costs”, it was - one would have thought - many moons ago (ten years, perhaps) when Hewitt started in the job.

Secondly, because Hewitt was on a fixed-term contract of more than two years, he was legally entitled to a pay off of sorts and this specific one under the terms of his contract. One hopes that the Tories aren’t recommending that the arts council break employment law…