West Surrey Council Chief Executive Named on £236,485

The official who will run bins, planning, council tax and social care in Woking from 1 April 2027 has been appointed, and the job pays £236,485 a year.

Susan Halliwell, currently chief executive of Bracknell Forest Council, was appointed permanent Chief Executive and Head of Paid Service of West Surrey Council at an extraordinary meeting of the West Surrey Shadow Authority on Thursday 10 September. The vote was unanimous. The meeting, at Millmead House in Guildford, started at 7pm and finished at 7.35pm (agenda and minutes).

West Surrey Council replaces Woking Borough Council, Guildford, Runnymede, Spelthorne, Surrey Heath and Waverley, along with Surrey County Council’s services in those areas, on 1 April 2027. Woking Borough Council ceases to exist the day before.

What the shadow authority actually decided

The resolution had four parts. The one that matters most locally is the second: that the appointment “from Vesting Day, and for the Authority whilst operating in shadow form from a date to be arranged, be approved” (printed minutes).

Councillors also appointed her Returning Officer for West Surrey Council. That means the same person who runs the services will run the elections, including the first elections to the new council and the first Pyrford Parish Council poll on 6 May 2027.

The recruitment, by the numbers

The figures come from the shadow authority’s own minutes and report:

• 147 potential candidates were approached, through the recruitment firm GatenbySanderson
• nine applications were received
• six candidates were longlisted
• five were shortlisted for final interview
• shortlisted candidates faced a cross-party members’ panel, a group leaders’ panel and a panel of external stakeholders
• the Senior Officer Employment Sub-Committee made a unanimous cross-party recommendation

Councillor Lance Spencer moved the appointment on behalf of that sub-committee. Councillor Vanessa King seconded it. The leader, Councillor Paul Follows, confirmed that no substantial or material objection had been raised by any member of the shadow executive through the statutory notification procedure.

The salary, and how it was set

The West Surrey Shadow Employment Committee agreed a salary range of £214,986 to £236,485. The appendix circulated to councillors on the day says the preferred candidate “will be appointed at the top of the salary scale, at £236,485” (appendix to item 6).

The main report, written earlier, quotes a four-point scale starting at £208,118 and rising to £228,930, with a note that the range would increase once national pay talks for chief executives concluded. An offer of 3.3% had been made by the employers’ side and not yet accepted (report, item 6). Add 3.3% to those two figures and you get £214,986 and £236,485 exactly, so the published range is the old scale with the pay offer applied.

The report also notes that this one appointment sets the pay structure for the top three tiers of the new organisation, which then feeds into the budget.

Woking’s own chief executive is a special case

The comparison a Woking reader will reach for is harder than it looks. Woking Borough Council’s published pay policy statement records that its chief executive “is not directly employed by the Council and was appointed by the Secretary of State to increase the capacity of the Commissioner team”, with the pay level for a commissioner set by government and paid for by the council (Pay Policy Statement). The same document puts the ratio between the highest paid earner and the median of the whole workforce at 4.68 to 1.

That is what commissioner-run local government looks like. The £236,485 post is the opposite arrangement: an employee chosen by councillors, on a scale set by councillors.

What she inherits

The sub-committee’s stated reasons say she has run a unitary council, with responsibility for a workforce of more than 2,300 staff and a budget of over £400m. She was previously Executive Director of Place at West Berkshire Council and held senior roles at Oxfordshire County Council, and she is the current lead chief executive of South East Strategic Leaders (Surrey LGR Hub).

The new council’s own finance officer is blunt about the inheritance. West Surrey “will operate in a very challenging financial environment, with significant budgetary pressures and limited financial resources from 2027/28”, the report says, and will be “increasingly reliant on Council Tax as the primary source of income”. Woking brings the largest single problem in that arithmetic, a debt of about £2.2 billion, which the government began repaying on 1 September.

What it means for you

You do not vote for a chief executive, and you will not be asked about this one. From 1 April 2027 the postholder is the most senior officer responsible for every council service in the borough, from bin collections and planning applications to adult social care, which Surrey County Council runs today.

Three practical points:

• Her start date has not been set. Andy Brown stays on as interim Head of Paid Service until the handover is agreed, which the appendix expects before 31 December 2026.
• Two more statutory appointments are due on the same deadline. Article 33(2) of the Surrey (Structural Changes) Order 2026 requires the shadow authority to appoint West Surrey Council’s monitoring officer and chief finance officer, as well as its head of paid service, before the end of the year.
• The council may not be called West Surrey Council for long. Shadow councillors backed a motion in July asking government to rename it West Surrey and South Middlesex Council, and that request is with ministers (Surrey LGR Hub).

Woking Borough Council published its own announcement of the appointment on 11 September (Woking Borough Council). What the new council charges, and what it charges you, is a 2027 question: our guide to Woking council tax bands sets out the current year’s bills.