WILTSHIRE Council leader Jane Scott has declared “the buck stops with me” after ousting chief executive Andrew Kerr from his job.

Mr Kerr will be made redundant as well as one of four corpor-ate directors in a bid to save £1.4m from the council’s budget by 2015.

Coun Scott said she would assume ultimate responsibility for the council’s decis-ions, even when they go wrong.

She said: “The buck stops with me. That’s the reality of it.

“This is an organisation which is led by politicians, not by officers, and that is what we are talking about here.”

Coun Scott and her Conservative cabinet members came under fire for appointing a chief executive in January 2010 on a permanent contract, but the council’s leader said she did not want such a post in the first place.

She said: “There has been a lot of talk about why we took on a chief executive in the first place.

“I didn’t want to pay out for such a post in particular, but my hands were tied by the Department for Communities and Local Government transitional arrangements to enable us to move to one authority.”

Coun Jon Hubbard, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said: “Only in February Jane Scott defended Andrew Kerr’s £183,000 salary and said how important he was to the council.

“Just six months later, she is disposing of him.

“If he was worth it then, then what has changed since?”

A £4m budget has been set aside to pay for redundancies, which will include Mr Kerr’s.

However, the exact amount he will receive will remain undisclosed until the end of the year.

The four corporate directors – Mark Boden, Carlton Brand, Carolyn Godfrey and Sue Redmond – declined an invitation to attend the meeting on Thursday at which the decision was made, while Mr Kerr was working in London.

The directors will now have to fight for just three jobs, but they have been told they will not receive any more money for taking on the extra responsibilities that will be attached to the new positions.

Mr Kerr, 53, could now be a favourite to take up the post of chief executive at Bath and North East Somerset Council after it decided it could not take the risk of axing its chief when the existing chief executive John Everitt retires next year.

Mr Kerr has already indicated that if the axe fell on his job, he would want to depart the council quickly.