Cash-strapped Cheshire East Council is to reorganise its senior management structure which, a report states, is 'no longer considered fit for purpose'.

The council last reviewed its senior management team in 2019 and further changes were made in 2021.

But a report to next week's meeting of the corporate policy committee states: "The existing structure no longer meets organisational needs, especially given the transformation work that needs to take place to ensure that the council becomes financially sustainable as well as responding to improvements required in children's services."

It says the structure proposed for the future 'is designed to support clearer decision-making processes and will enable senior managers to provide clarity of risk tolerance and more strategic whole council thinking'.

But it doesn't explain what these changes will be or how much they will cost.

Those items are excluded from the public part of the report and marked as 'confidential' in case individuals are identified.

They will only be discussed in part two of the meeting when the press and public are excluded.

But there are hints if new top bosses are brought in at higher salaries than envisaged, under-pressure public services will carry the cost.

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The report states: "The indicative costing assumes appointment at the salary points shown. [These are not shown in the public papers].

"However, if any candidate was appointed at a higher salary point, the relevant service would need to identify funding to maintain our financial resources."

Cheshire East has been working 'under capacity' in some areas for a while, following a failure to fill some posts to save money.

The need to address this and restructure senior management overall was identified during a review of the council by the Local Government Association (LGA).

The report to next week's meeting states: "The external review identified that the unsustainable level of vacancies and acting-up arrangements are impacting on the ability for the council to respond to the challenges it faces.

"It also identified that there appears to be an overlap between director and head of service roles in some areas."

The planned restructure comes at the same time as Cheshire East is looking to embark on a transformation programme to put its finances back on track and address the four-year funding gap of £100m.

The council also has to bring its children's services up to standard after the Department for Education served it with an improvement notice following its recent inadequate Ofsted rating.

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That children's services improvement plan has been drawn up by officers and was approved at full council last month.

The corporate policy meeting takes place on Wednesday, August 21, at 5.30pm at the council's Westfields HQ in Sandbach.