One of the five directors appointed to the new Dorset Council had been suspended by his previous authority during an investigation into the way an election was administered.

Dorset Council say that there was a rigorous selection process, it looked at the facts and are content that John Sellgren is the best person for the £135,000 a year job as executive director, place. He is expected to start work in Dorset early in the new year.

Mr Sellgren previously worked for Newcastle-Under-Lyme Borough Council in Staffordshire.

In a unusual twist, Martin Hamilton, strategic director at the Dorset Councils Partnership will be going to Newcastle-Under-Lyme to take on Mr Sellgren's old job in February.

Some councillors were unhappy at last week's shadow Dorset Council meeting in Dorchester when they were asked to approve the appointment of the new directors with no details, apart from their names. One has still not been named.

Dorchester councillor Trevor Jones said at the weekend that he would be asking questions this week about the way appointments were reported to councillors. At the meeting he described the way appointments were announced as “a charade.”

Cllr Tim Yarker said at the time that councillors were being asked to 'rubber stamp' the appointments with no information of the appointees backgrounds and that, if only as a courtesy, councillors should have been provided with a basic CV of each. He added that he had confidence in the appointment panels of councillors who made the selections.

Neither statement reflects on any of the candidates abilities to do the jobs. Both councillors were unhappy about the process of reporting the appointments.

Dorset Council said, legally, there was no requirement to provide any more information to councillors than it did and, in fact, only had an obligation to report details of two of the posts.

Mr Sellgren, who was chief executive at Newcastle-Under-Lyme Borough Council left his position 'by mutual consent' in August 2018 after being suspended while an investigation was held into an election held in June 2017 where hundreds of electors were unable to vote in a parliamentary contest won by Labour's Paul Farrelly by a margin of just 30 over Conservative Owen Meredith. Mr Sellgren was acting returning officer for the election. He has not been disciplined by his former authority.

An independent investigation by the Association of Electoral Administrators, carried out by Andrew Scallan, said that a "complex picture of administrative mistakes around registration and postal voting processes" was discovered which meant that amongst those who lost their chance to vote were first-timers and students.

Mr Sellgren, who had asked for the investigation to be carried out, was suspended from duty and in August 2018 an announcement was made about his departure from the council by mutual consent and with no additional payments being made. He did not claim the £3,000 fee he was entitled to for the election work.

Report author Mr Scallan says he was struck by the “openness and candour” of Mr Sellgren and a colleague, as well as the software provider, and their willingness to understand what went wrong and to ensure that nothing like it would happen again.

The report says that while there were complex problems surrounding election arrangements because of a lack of experienced staff "the inexperience of the elections team, in particular, led to an over-reliance on the elections software system, which was not properly managed, and missed opportunities to identify what had gone wrong and take remedial action.”

The report says that Mr Sellgren took every reasonable step to fill the vacancies, but was unable to.

“The changes in personnel were in large part at the root of the problems that arose at the 8 June election,” said the report.

“While working hard, the inexperienced staff were clearly overwhelmed with the number of applications received ... This meant that by polling day, 439 applications that had been received in time, needed no follow-up action and could have been determined within the statutory timescales, were left unprocessed. There were also 509 applications that had been processed, but had been added to the July register as a result of the delay in switching the software to ‘election mode’.”

A statement issued in August by the Newcastle-Under-Lyme Borough Council said: “John Sellgren has left the the borough council by mutual consent after seven years as Chief Executive.

“We would like to place on record our thanks for John’s efforts during his seven years with us. The council recently had its first all-out elections and the new administration has an ambitious manifesto and many significant projects to deliver in the years ahead.

“With this in mind the authority will now consider what management leadership arrangements to put in place to support this programme.”

Mr Sellgren said: “I have enjoyed my time at Newcastle and send my best wishes to the dedicated team of staff and partners with whom it has been a pleasure to have worked.”

The Shadow Dorset Council issued the following statement yesterday:

"We have received enquiries about the recently appointed Director of Place – John Sellgren - and his previous role as Chief Executive of Newcastle-Under-Lyme Borough Council.

Mr Sellgren was suspended by the then Leader of Newcastle-Under-Lyme Council following a report into the council’s management of the 2107 General Election.

The new Dorset Council has looked at this issue and concluded it has no impact on Mr Sellgren’s ability to do the job he has applied for, and been properly appointed to, following a rigorous national recruitment exercise.

We are satisfied with the due diligence we carried out for this role. We took references including one from Newcastle-Under-Lyme Borough Council. Our retained recruitment advisers, Penna also undertook a range of due diligence checks normal for any high-level appointment – public or private sector.

Mr Sellgren will not be handling elections work – that is the role of our Chief Executive designate, Matt Prosser, who has run election days in Dorset for a number of years now.

Mr Sellgren will be responsible for our Place Directorate, which handles many of the functions that people see as classic local authority – ranging from Housing to Tourism, leisure centres to harbours, waste and recycling to highways and transport. So a wide portfolio of services.

We chose Mr Sellgren for his wide range of experience which includes county, district and national policy roles.

It is not this council’s place to comment on the workings of another. However, there is an independent report on the issue available on the internet, so we were aware of the full facts when we interviewed him.

John was not directly responsible for the errors of the 2017 election in Newcastle-Under-Lyme but as Electoral Returning Officer he was accountable."

The Echo reported last month how there was concern over the cost of recruiting the directors to the new Dorset Council.

There was criticism of the use of consultants to oversee the process, but council leader Rebecca Knox says that, despite the cost, which could be up to £75,000 for the five jobs, the use of 'outsiders' to select the best candidates and then vet them is justified given the need for transparency.

The five senior posts have a combined annual salary of £655,000.