AN MP has slammed the pay out being offered to Bournemouth council chief executive Tony Williams.

Conor Burns, MP for Bournemouth West, said the £394,000 redundancy payment was "eye-wateringly excessive", and denied the move to axe the post was driven by government cuts.

Councillors are due to meet on Friday to rubber stamp the plans, which were announced last week to the surprise of many at the town hall.

Mr Burns said: "Whatever the reasons for the redundancy of the chief executive I think it stretches credulity to suggest it is a result of central government funding pressures.

"I suspect this line was merely some junior town hall PR person trying to be helpful.

"Whilst it appears to be the legal requirement I have not spoken to a single councillor or other person who doesn’t think the eye-wateringly excessive settlement is a text-book example of why the government is right to be bringing in a cap on public sector pay outs."

He questioned the morality of those accepting massive pay outs of taxpayer money, stating: "I would also just observe that just because this is the amount that has legally to be offered there is nothing to say that morally it has to be the amount accepted by the individual."

Mr Burns referred to a government policy expected to come into force this summer, which will cap public sector exit payments at £95,000.

The new measures will also see any redundancy payment returned should the recipient return to public sector work shortly afterwards, for instance as a consultant.

The new policy sets £80,000 as the maximum salary on which an exit payment can be based, a maximum tariff for calculating exit payments of three weeks’ pay per year of service and a ceiling of 15 months on the maximum number of months’ salary that can be paid.

Also, there will be a taper on compensation as the recipient gets closer to retirement age.

Mr Burns said: "This policy springs directly from the revulsion the public feel about excessive public sector pay offs of the sort that have been reported in the Echo in recent days."

Mr Williams had just returned from four months off sick when he was placed on leave after proposals were drawn up to make his job redundant.

He will receive £63,000 in statutory redundancy pay, six months’ pay in lieu of notice costing £85,000 and early release of his pension, costing £246,000.

The report for Friday's meeting states that Bournemouth and Poole have already agreed to share a corporate services director, a chief finance officer and a head of adult social care.