Lancaster City Council has a new Town Clerk.

A special committee set up to restructure the council's top management has agreed that Director of Development, Charles Wilson, should be appointed to the post.

The City Treasurer, David Corker, will become Chief Executive in the top-level shake up following the controversial departure of former Town Clerk, John Burrows.

Chairman of the restructuring committee, Council Leader Stanley Henig, recommended the new appointments in a detailed report he put before members.

They will take up their roles in an official capacity on December 12, the day after the former Town Clerk is made redundant.

Cllr Henig said: "These arrangements will strengthen the council and will enable us to go ahead with the implementation of a whole range of exciting policies."

But independent councillors are angry at what they claim is a council cover up.

"We have just been told that the job is redundant so how can they turn round two weeks later and appoint a new Town Clerk," said Cllr Geoff Wilson.

"This issue really has fired up the public who are furious that the whole truth is not being told. Cllr Henig is hiding behind the Local Government Act's reporting restrictions. It's time he came clean."

Former Town Clerk , John Burrows, has gone on record to claim he left the council because of a "clash of styles." In an interview in the Local Government Chronicle, John Burrows explained that there were differences of scale, timing and culture between Lancaster and the other councils he has worked for and that most of the senior staff had been at Lancaster for 10 to 20 years. He said: "There are bound to be difficulties in that sort of relationship. I was a newcomer to the authority, it may have presented problems for some."

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