SAVINGS made by scrapping two part-time council posts in Waverley Borough Council’s communities budget will be used to fund a permanent health and well-being officer.

The post was previously funded from the Government’s Better Care Fund but the money was due to run out.

The officer will continue to deliver the action plan already developed and champion issues most affecting borough residents; helping deliver new community facilities at farnham Memorial Hall; implementing Waverley’s health and wellbeing strategy and its ageing well strategy to support older people to lead independent lives.

Waverley’s operational services portfolio holder Alfold councillor Kevin Deanus welcomed the decision to recommend the new post should be created at last week’s executive. “Health and wellbeing have been identified as a key priority and this post will be instrumental in delivering it,” he told the committee.

The meeting also recommended staffing changes should be made “to maintain a robust and resilient structure and suitable corporate governance arrangements”.

Following Robin Pellow’s retirement as monitoring and returning officer, Waverley’s head of policy and governance Robin Taylor will be appointed monitoring officer in July.

Executive director Paul Wenham will also be designated electoral registration officer and returning officer

Waverley director of finance and resources Graeme Clark will take on the role of line manager for the internal audit.

To demonstrate the independence of the internal audit from financial services, the internal audit client manager will report to the executive director.

Farnham Residents member John Williamson questioned the staff changes to improve corporate governance, which he called “almost like marking your own homework”.

Council leader Robert Knowles, from Haslemere, assured him it was “normal practice”. “Last year’s election was a marathon,” Mr Knowles said.“The general consensus was it all ran extremely well. We had none of the criticism some of our neighbours did.”