{"id":417784,"date":"2025-09-12T06:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T06:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417784\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T06:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T06:38:09","slug":"glasgow-city-council-leader-calls-for-return-of-golden-goodbyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417784\/","title":{"rendered":"Glasgow City Council leader calls for return of &#8216;golden goodbyes&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  Chief executive\u00a0Annemarie O&#8217;Donnell\u00a0received a \u00a3357,845;\u00a0Elaine Galletly, former director of Legal and Administration, received a \u00a3223,065 pension contribution and \u00a359,971 for \u201ccompensation for loss of office\u201d;\u00a0Carole Forrest, a former solicitor to the council, got a redundancy payment of \u00a395,000;\u00a0Anne Connolly, a former principal advisor to the chief executive got a pension and redundancy package of \u00a3191,767; and Robert Anderson, head of human resources, got a pension and redundancy deal worth \u00a3147,654.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  <strong>Read More:<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Ms O&#8217;Donnell paid back\u00a0\u00a3317,000\u00a0earlier this year.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Legal firm Brodies conducted an investigation into the payments and found no evidence of officials having acted &#8220;improperly&#8221; but concluded that Ms O&#8217;Donnell&#8217;s exit was not &#8220;lawfully approved&#8221; in line with council rules.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Last week the Accounts Commission found the process which led to the payments\u00a0\u00a0&#8220;fell short of the behaviour and standards expected of public servants&#8221;.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The commission found no evidence of misconduct, but concluded\u00a0the process lacked scrutiny, transparency, and governance.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heraldscotland.com\/topics\/susan-aitken\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Susan Aitken<\/a>, the leader of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.glasgowtimes.co.uk\/topics\/glasgow-city-council\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Glasgow City Council<\/a>, has called on the former officials to pay back the money.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  She <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyrecord.co.uk\/news\/politics\/glasgow-council-leader-urges-fat-35888334\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told the Daily Record<\/a>: &#8220;I am very angry about it.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  &#8220;I wasn\u2019t told about it because the very small number of individuals involved knew that I wouldn\u2019t have approved it, that I wouldn\u2019t have signed it off.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cIt was done covertly. The information was not shared with senior politicians. It absolutely should have been. It was kept from us. That information was withheld.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  &#8220;I was personally misled and personally lied to about it, or certainly about the situation around it.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cWe have retrieved some of that money, I\u2019m very glad to say. We continue to believe that all of the individuals involved should pay\u00a0back. I think it would be the right thing to do.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  &#8220;They should certainly, at the very least, look to their consciences and consider following in the footsteps of the former chief executive, who I think did look to her conscience and decided to pay it back.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cNone of them had less than comfortable pensions to begin with. They were all senior officers. They don\u2019t need this extra.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chief executive\u00a0Annemarie O&#8217;Donnell\u00a0received a \u00a3357,845;\u00a0Elaine Galletly, former director of Legal and Administration, received a \u00a3223,065 pension contribution and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-417784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115189955364364097","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}