Andrew Kerr (civil servant)

Andrew Kerr is a local government officer who has served as Chief Executive of several principal councils. He has been with the City of Edinburgh Council since August 2015.

A native of Falkirk, in his youth Kerr was an international sprinter. He won a bronze medal at 400m in the 1977 European Athletics Junior Championships.[1][2]

He worked for Birmingham Council for three years before becoming Chief Executive successively of North Tyneside Council (2005) and Wiltshire Council (2010), then Chief Operating Officer of the City of Cardiff Council in March 2012, and Chief Executive of Cornwall Council in 2013 before his next move, to Edinburgh.[3]

Kerr was appointed to the Wiltshire job in January 2010, and in May 2011 he made headlines with an increase to his £189,000 salary while the Council was cutting hundreds of jobs.[4][5] While initially defending his pay rise,[6] after media and political pressure[7] he decided to turn down the increase.[5] However, in October 2011 he was made redundant, with council leader Jane Scott commenting "This is an organisation which is led by politicians, not by officers, and that is what we are talking about here.”[8]

In April 2012 Kerr began a new job at Cardiff.[9] In October 2013, he was appointed as Chief Executive in Cornwall, but Mebyon Kernow was against the appointment, describing Kerr as "too transient... The man seems to flip from job to job every 18 months". In November 2014 he controversially called for the resignation of a Liberal Democrat councillor, with one political commentator observing "For an unelected Chief Executive to demand without explanation the resignation of a democratically elected councillor should be a scandal."[10] In May 2015 Kerr himself resigned, to take up the equivalent job in Edinburgh,[11] with a Cornwall cabinet member stating that the resignation came completely out of the blue.[12] Shortly after arriving in Edinburgh, Kerr was reported in the Edinburgh News as saying that he was "here to stay".[13]

In September 2016, Kerr told The Times that he was spearheading a 2050 Edinburgh City Vision in an attempt to identify a "North Star", as without that guiding light "any plans get shaky". The vision was one for a city of enlightenment and empty bins.[14]

In April 2017, The Sunday Post reported that Kerr had taken a flight to a property investment conference in Cannes at a cost of £4,000 on the day that news broke of five hundred council staff agreeing to take voluntary redundancy to cut costs.[15] In June 2017, Kerr told The Edinburgh Reporter that he welcomed the SNP-Labour coalition which had just retained control of the city council.[16] On 9 December 2017 he joined Bob Geldof and others at Sleep in the Park, a publicity stunt in which they slept the night in Princes Street Gardens to the music of Liam Gallagher, Deacon Blue, and Frightened Rabbit, to help the homeless.[17]