News / Willie’s back in post
SHETLAND Islands Council assistant chief executive Willie Shannon returned to his post this week after an absence of four months.
Mr Shannon had been on leave since early September after his job was “deleted” without consultation by SIC chief executive David Clark.
The 47 year old said this week that he looked forward to working with SIC convener Sandy Cluness and all the other councillors.
Mr Cluness welcomed Mr Shannon’s return, saying that he would be “doing what he did before”.
Meanwhile the council is advertising for a new head of capital programming, a role which was added to Mr Shannon’s portfolio in December 2008, after the council approved the new post last month.
Mr Cluness said he had not yet heard when the local government umbrella group COSLA would be responding to the council’s request for assistance with “performance monitoring”, following the hiatus at the authority over the past few months.
Audit Scotland have also yet to set a date for sending their Controller of Audit to the islands to investigate how the council has been run for the past few months, after qualifying the SIC’s accounts for the fourth year running and commenting on “high profile relationship issues” between councillors and the chief executive.
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