Room at the top for extra council bosses

The assistants will each earn £46,000 per year and help the recently installed director Mark Pattison.

The posts have been advertised in the national press and follow a series of appointments to top jobs at the council.

One assistant director will also act as a deputy of the department when Mr Pattison is on leave.

Each will have a different area of responsibility:

Welfare of pupils including monitoring attendance, exclusions and admissions policies.

School improvements, educational standards and research.

Resources, finance and education for the over 16s. Council staff are busy working on setting up the borough's new education and training department.

The council will take control of the borough's schools when it becomes a unitary council next spring.

Council leaders have put education top of the list of their priorities and the advert reads for the new directors reads: "We aim to provide services which will improve the quality of life for everyone in the area, and make the area a centre of learning and opportunity second to none."

A special panel of councillors will be set up to interview people hoping to fill the posts.

The council has confirmed almost all the top jobs at town hall have been filled.

More than 10 directors have been taken on to run the departments of the new council over the last two months.

Assistant housing director George Campling will take charge of rights advice and entitlements and the borough's solicitor Catherine Parkinson will head Legal Services.

Operations director Ian Stephenson will take control of the renamed direct services and Tom Flanagan, an officer at Exeter City Council, will become Director of Regeneration.

The post of executive director will be readvertised after a suitable candidate was not found in the first round of interviews.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.