Environmental services director of Cheshire County Council, Tom McCabe, has been appointed as one of two new strategic directors for the planned unitary authority of Cheshire East.

The Government announced last December that Cheshire would be abolished to ‘create two flagship new councils, improving services and bringing potential savings.’ But the county warned the one-year timetable would create ‘serious risks of service failure’.

McCabe, as Cheshire East’s director of place, will be charged with disaggregating county services and merging three district councils’ services, while helping secure £15M in savings.

McCabe, who was appointed as the youngest-ever member of the county council’s management board in 2005, speaking to Surveyor, said the timetable for merging services such as refuse collection was ‘challenging’ and that ‘Rome won’t be built in a day’. As one of only three strategic directors for Cheshire East, two overseeing services, McCabe said there was ‘a heavy emphasis on frontline services’.

With fewer directors competing at budget time, he would also be ‘well-placed to advise councillors objectively on the merits of different investment decisions,’ such as of investing extra money in community safety, or in economic development.

McCabe now has to decide on the assistant director structure beneath him. He said there were ‘several options’ for the management of different ‘place’ services.

The county’s seven-year current term maintenance contract, which started in 2004, would continue, jointly managed by officers in Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester, with the aim that the contractor Nuttall ‘doesn’t notice the difference’.

The intention was to fill ‘the vast majority’ of officer posts with staff from the current county and district councils, added McCabe. He has overseen a 20% reduction in the workforce of the county council’s environmental services department since 2006 to achieve £6M savings while improving the service’s Audit Commission rating from three to four stars.

Cheshire West and Chester, meanwhile, is advertising nationally for six director posts, including a director of environmental services.