Cheshire East bosses will soon be publishing a report which will tackle the serious management failings identified during the Lyme Green investigation.

Council Leader Michael Jones added: “Lyme Green has exposed serious weaknesses in our organisational culture.

“These have caused confusion and inefficiency and have led to poor decisions by some senior staff, because it was not clear who had authority to act and who was ultimately accountable for the success or failure of the Lyme Green development project.

“As a result, public confidence in the council has been dented and we must act swiftly to restore this.

“Lyme Green required staff from a range of different services to work together as a team, but relationships between the different professionals involved were sometimes strained.

“For this reason, necessary advice was sometimes neither sought nor taken at key stages in the project and, therefore, wrong assumptions were made as a result.”

Chief executive Kim Ryley said: “My proposals will seek to break down outdated professional silos, so that the council works as a single team, with greater clarity over shared objectives.

“This has meant that a thorough and complete review of management roles and responsibilities at all levels is needed.

“The revised management arrangements will reduce the numbers of tiers of management, and will increase spans of responsibility to reduce the overall number of management posts by at least a quarter.

“As well as reducing costs to protect frontline jobs and services, the proposed changes will clarify managers’ personal accountabilities and change working methods to strengthen integrated team effort and solutions across the organisation as a whole, so that everyone involved is clear of their role and responsibilities.

“Once the proposals have been agreed by councillors, the first phase of the new structure affecting the council’s top 40 staff will be in place by Easter with the full management review being completed by the summer.