New South Cambs chief due in autumn at Cambourne HQ

SOUTH Cambridgeshire’s new chief executive is expected to join the district council from Lancashire in the autumn.

Jean Hunter, 53, chief executive of South Ribble Borough Council, will succeed Greg Harlock, who retires at the end of August.

She has held senior positions in local government for more than 20 years, initially with Leicester City Council and then as chief executive of East Hampshire District Council before joining South Ribble in June 2000.

Before joining local government, she worked in the private sector for a number of companies, including Granada Television, Beecham Consumer Products and Hay Management Consultants. Her speciality was information management, marketing, acquisition and merger policies and cultural change programmes.

She has also run two companies of her own, in the transport and distribution sector and in the pharmaceutical industry.

Mr Harlock, who is 59 and lives in Fenstanton, has an association with SCDC that goes back to its formation in 1974 when he worked for the (also new) Cambridgeshire County Council.

He had been due to move to East Cambridgeshire District Council in 1987, but the then chief executive of SCDC poached him as an audit manager. For six months he was made PA to the chief executive and in 1988 was appointed commercial director.

He was named financial director in 1994, taking over as chief executive in 2006.