Pendle councillors have this evening agreed to restructure the borough’s senior management and paid tribute to chief executive Stephen Barnes, whose position will disappear as part of the reorganisation.
Tonight’s full council meeting agreed to accept Mr Barnes’s application for voluntary redundancy which will come into effect at the end of March.
Council leader Hoe Cooney said Mr Barnes has done an exceptional job. “I have enjoyed working with him or the past two years,” he said.
“Pendle has been extremely lucky to have had him in post for the past 22 years.”
Liberal Democrat councillor Tony Greaves, who chaired the restructuring committee, said he echoes Coun. Cooney’s sentiments and said Mr Barnes had an exceptional job. “The world is a very different place to the one which existed when he came into the job and he has coped with these changes really well,”he said.