‘Charlie’s Angels’ won’t be flying home

Wednesday 28 March 2018

Four UK consultants brought in to support the new States Chief, at a cost of over £430,000 over six months, will be sticking around longer than originally planned – in a new set of roles.

Chief Executive Charlie Parker has announced that his specially-appointed ‘Transition Team’ – jokingly referred to by Mr Parker in a Chamber of Commerce speech as “Charlie’s Angels” – would be stepping down from their current roles, but that three would continue to work on special projects throughout the rest of the year.

The fourth member of the team will continue for an additional few months, but could later be replaced if an alternative is found.

Questioned by Express, a States of Jersey spokesperson confirmed that one of the trio of new appointments would be former HMRC Communications Director and Labour party adviser Stephen Hardwick.

However, they declined to reveal any further information on the other consultants that would be retained or the projects that they would be working on.

The other three consultants recruited included former Highways England Executive Director Anna Daroy, senior HR consultant Jacquie McGeachie, and Camilla Black, a Chief Finance Officer and Commercial Director with experience working in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

The team have been in post since October last year to assist with the sudden major power shift at the top of the island’s civil service after former CEO John Richardson took retirement half a year earlier than expected, with a severance package believed to total in the region of £230,000.

Their mission included assisting Mr Parker with his ambitious ‘one government’ plan to rip up the structure of the States and reform it into a new Whitehall-style system, which was announced earlier this month.

Pictured: Mr Parker announced plans to restructure the government earlier this month, which involved the creation of new States departments to be housed in a single building.

But those efforts have come at an unforeseen cost to taxpayers, with the cost of hiring and paying each consultant coming in at roughly £100,000 each for their six months of work.

Accommodating them on the island came at a separate cost - £15,868 – while travel costs stood at £16,127, bringing the total spent on the foursome to £432,945.  

The States did not confirm the cost of retaining the team. 

Mr Parker commented: “The Transition Team has done what we asked of them, and that phase of work is now complete. We have a rigorous view of the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation, and the team’s recommendations have informed both the one government structure I announced recently, and the priorities for action.

“We are now moving from review and recommendation to action, and we’re kicking off a wide range of important cross-government initiatives, which now need a different approach. I am therefore standing down the Transition Team as a unit, although we will retain three individual members to support the delivery of specific initiatives on new time-limited contracts over the next year. A fourth will continue to oversee a specific post for a couple of months pending a permanent appointment to that position through an open competition.”