by political editor Paul Francis

Kent County Council has confirmed its £197,000 group managing director Katherine Kerswell is to leave.

The council this evening issued a statement announcing the news, along with details of a re-organisation.

The news follows several weeks of rumour and speculation about the managing director's future and her continued absence from County Hall.

It is unknown what the terms of any payoff might be but sources say it could be in the region of £450,000.

Mrs Kerswell joined the county council in March 2010 from Nottinghamshire county council following the departure of former chief executive Peter Gilroy.

She initiated a wide-ranging re-organisation of the way the authority was run, with the shake-up leading to the departure of a string of senior directors.

A number of temporary interim managers had to be recruited to plug the gaps.

She was behind the controversial "Change To Keep Succeeding" programme, which saw a restructuring of the council under five new directorates but with broadly the same number of senior directors.

It is known that many Conservatives were unhappy with some aspects of the restructuring and had voiced those concerns to the group leadership.

A statement released this evening by KCC said: "Katherine Kerswell has done an exceptional job at Kent reshaping our approach to service delivery and recasting our overall management arrangements.

"She is a first-rate public servant with tremendous skills at making large organisations work well.

"Her management direction has helped produce very significant savings to the Council and confirmed Kent's position as a leading authority.

"In just 18 months we have shifted from an approach that was highly departmental to one based on the whole organisation working together for the people of Kent.

"We now expect our Cabinet and chief officers to work more collaboratively together. This way of working has already resulted in improved services to Kent's residents and lower costs to Kent's taxpayers."

It said the MD would leave the council by the end of the year to "pursue new interests."

Opposition Liberal Democrat councillor Tim Prater has questioned KCC's plans to do without a managing director, warning it is a leap into the dark and unproven.

He has also raised questions about the reported six-figure pay-off the former group managing director is set to get, saying that if she resigned it is not clear why any money is being paid as part of a settlement.

He told the KM Group:"I have enormous reservations about the idea of doing without a chief executive. There is a good reason why every large organisation and business in the world has somebody at the top and KCC is the largst shire county council in the country. To take this step now when the jury is still out on how it is working elsewhere is a huge leap in the dark."

He said that KCC needed to clarify whether Mrs Kerswell had resigned or been made redundant.

"From the statement the council has put out, it reads like she has resigned. If she did, why is she being paid off at all? That is the queston every taxpayer in Kent deserves an answer to. And if the post of managing director is being made redundant, we have yet to have that vote. To have announced already that she is going is very convenient."