Pay hike as Executive makes last-minute search for top civil servant

The 62-year-old, who faced the unenviable task of keeping public services operating for almost three years in the unprecedented circumstances of having no ministers, announced in December that he would be retiring this August.

In the pre-Christmas statement in which he announced his retirement, Mr Sterling was explicit as to why he was making the announcement so far in advance of his departure.

The statement said that Mr Sterling “is making the announcement now so that a competition for his successor can be launched at the earliest opportunity when an Executive is restored”.

Yet it is only now – weeks away from his departure – that Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill’s department has advertised for his replacement.

And, having approached the issue sluggishly until now, there is sudden haste, with just 13 days for an application from anyone wanting to act as secretary to the Executive, principal policy adviser to the first and deputy first ministers and leader of the almost 23,000 members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

The wording of the advertisement points to a substantial salary hike for whoever gets the job. At present, according to the most recent set of accounts published by Stormont Castle, Mr Sterling receives a salary of between £155,000 and £160,000.

But his successor will be paid between £160,563 and £188,272 – a salary greater than that of the Prime Minister.

Candidates are also told of an “attractive pension package” and will receive a total of 42 days’ holiday every year.

Mr Sterling retires with a pension which over a year ago was valued at more than £1.8 million.

The process of recruitment will include candidates who pass the first stage having to undertake a “psychological personality assessment” with a psychologist and a series of interviews. The process will culminate in an unusually politicised final interview because it will be conducted by Mrs Foster and Ms O’Neill, who will then decide on who to appoint.

That final interview will not be until mid-September, meaning that there will be no head of the civil service for at least a month.

In a forward to the booklet for prospective candidates, Mrs Foster and Ms O’Neill state that they need someone with “a full range of high level skills and relevant experience” to function in Stormont’s “unique political environment”

Curiously, despite the expectation that such a senior role would automatically require enormous experience, the job advertisement states that “people aged under 35 are currently known to be under represented at senior grades across the NICS” and therefore applications from those under 35 “would be particularly welcomed”.

However, the widespread expectation among many civil servants is that if an internal candidate is successful then the strong favourite is Sue Gray, now permanent secretary of the Department of Finance and prior to that one of the most powerful mandarins in Whitehall.

The former head of ethics at the Cabinet Office has both admirers and detractors. Some see her as a necessary breath of fresh air, and the sort of energetic outsider needed to reform a Stormont bureaucracy battered by revelations of its own incompetence during the cash for ash scandal.

But others believe that Ms Gray’s actions do not always match her rhetoric, including long-standing allegations of secrecy – an area in which Stormont has long had major problems, and which contributed to the RHI scandal.

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