SPT chief on sick leave to get £61k pay-off in fresh start for quango

Ron Culley has been off sick on full pay since announcing he would take early retirement on health grounds in February.

He quit his 129,000-a-year post at SPT – Strathclyde Partnership for Transport – after revelations about expenses claimed by senior officials, including Labour councillors.

The Scotsman can reveal that Mr Culley will formally step down on Friday in return for the one-off severance payment, and be replaced by his deputy, Gordon Maclennan, on a one-year interim contract.

Mr Culley, 60, will also keep full pension rights, although after just four years at SPT, these are thought to be modest. The severance package is expected to be rubber-stamped by a committee of councillors tomorrow.

SPT was rocked by a series of allegations over the way a handful of executives, including two Labour councillors, racked up expenses of 117,573 in three years, including almost 50,000 on fact-finding trips overseas.

SPT chairman Alistair Watson and vice-chairman Davie McLachlan, both Labour councillors, resigned in February. Mr Watson, like Mr Culley, cited poor health.

Mr Culley, a former Labour candidate and chief executive of Scottish Enterprise Glasgow, had been close to key party figures. He was widely linked with city council leader Steven Purcell, who himself recently stepped down amid unrelated revelations that he had used cocaine.

SNP councillors in Glasgow are said to be seething at the prospect of Mr Culley receiving any severance deal. A senior Nationalist said Mr Culley should "get nothing more than the legal minimum".

The SNP has asked Audit Scotland to investigate SPT's expenses. A Tory councillor has asked the police to step in. SPT itself has recruited independent accountants to go over its books.

It is understood Mr Culley, who is said to have a heart condition, could have remained on sick pay until October. His contract entitles him to a minimum severance package of 30,500. Effectively, SPT officials have agreed to buy out his sick pay so they can replace him sooner rather than later. It is understood this move saved the body some 20,000.

Mr Maclennan will be replaced as deputy chief executive by Eric Stewart, a former senior official at First Glasgow, the bus giant, again for a year.

Senior Holyrood figures have signalled SPT, whose main job is to run the Glasgow Subway, has effectively been given a year to sort itself out, or face extinction.

A spokesman for SPT said: "Ron Culley's early retirement and related issues will go before SPT's personnel committee on Friday."