BURY Council have appointed their new top management team to take them into the Millennium.

Councillors from all three political parties spent nine hours deliberating on the men who should top the town hall's new corporate structure.

Heading up the team is Dennis Taylor, whose appointment as chief executive will be confirmed by the full council next month.

The four new executive directors are Philip Allen, who will head up Competitive Services; Ian Cheetham at development and environmental services, Sandy Paterson at personal and community services and Stanley Monaghan at corporate resources.

Also confirmed this week were a number of borough officer posts - senior managers with day-to-day responsibility for individual services.

They are:

Borough education officer: Harold Williams, who will take over from current acting chief education officer Graham Talbot when he leaves next month.

Borough social services officer: David Ashworth.

Borough treasurer: John Cook.

Personnel officer: John Stokes.

Borough Engineer: Mike Cannon.

Borough planning officer: Jim Metcalf.

Borough environmental services officer: Alan Freer.

Borough housing officer: David Gillett.

Further senior appointments are due to be announced in the next week or so.

Mr Taylor said: "I felt deeply honoured when offered the post and I welcome the exciting challenge.

"We have now put together an excellent team, one that will drive the council forward into the next Millennium."

COUNCIL chiefs filled their top posts from within - a move that caused splits within the ruling Labour group.

Normally all senior posts are advertised externally in line with the council's equal opportunities policy.

But this time round the Labour leadership decided they needed the posts filling as soon as possible.

Coun Derek Boden, council leader, said there had been debate within the group about appointing from within.

"We felt we had to look at the circumstances," he said. "Because of the problems we have as an authority we needed to have people in place now."

He said all the candidates had either done the job, or a substantial part of it already, and there was "no better way to prove their suitability for a post".

"This is not to say we will not advertise externally in the future, because we do, on the whole, want to give everyone a chance," he said.

"The trouble with that is it takes time to get somebody actually in post, and then some time for them to work themselves into the job," he added.

"We need people in post now, and we felt we were justified this time in doing things this way."

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