A new interim chief executive of Tameside council has been appointed after the previous incumbent resigned ahead of a report finding he breached legislation with a social media post.
Sandra Stewart, the council’s monitoring officer and head of governance and pensions, will assume the top role for a period of 12 months. In an urgent item voted through at an extraordinary meeting of the town hall this week, councillors were told that the previous long-standing chief executive, Steven Pleasant MBE, had resigned without giving them time to find a replacement.
A report presented at the meeting found that Mr Pleasant, who had been the head of paid service for 13 years, breached government acts and the statutory code for local authority publicity when he expressed surprise on Twitter that a Tory voter had ‘compassion and empathy’.
