One of Arts Council England’s most senior directors stands to pocket a redundancy payment of around £100,000 because she opted to take a six-month paid sabbatical from ACE rather than resign outright.

Andrea Stark was, until recently, executive director of Arts Council East and South East, a post she had held for about ten years. In October last year, it was announced that she had been appointed as "the first chief executive of a new charity managing the High House Production Park" (HHPP).

No mention was made at the time of the fact that Stark would remain employed by ACE and take a paid sabbatical from the Arts Council instead of drawing a salary from HHPP. By doing this, Stark will ensure that she is still on the ACE payroll until 30 June 2013, when she will be eligible for a redundancy payment widely predicted to be in the region of £100,000.

HHPP is a 14-acre creative and cultural facility where sets are built for Royal Opera House productions and training is offered in backstage theatre skills. Its chair is Tony Hall, the Royal Opera House chief executive who will shortly become the new director-general of the BBC.

At the time Stark’s new post was announced, Tony Hall said: “I’m delighted that Andrea is taking up this new role. She is perfect for it.”

In her Arts Council post, Stark was instrumental in establishing High House Production Park as a flagship theatre arts centre. But now that the government has cut its funding to ACE by around 30 per cent until at least 2015, Stark’s post is one of more than 100 to have been axed, and as a result she is to be made redundant.

ACE admits: We could have made it clearer

The Arts Council confirmed that Stark is on paid sabbatical to the role of chief executive at HHPP, and admitted “the arrangement could have been made more clear” at the time her new role was announced. The sabbatical will end on 30 June 2013.

A spokeswoman said that Stark is one of a small minority of long-serving staff who has a protected employment term under TUPE regulations which allows them to have a paid sabbatical. In 2011, it was agreed that the remaining staff had to take their paid sabbatical within the next two years or they would lose their entitlement to do so.

“Andrea’s sabbatical met the criteria as she is working for a related organisation and it was agreed that her sabbatical would take place during the first half of 2013,” said the spokeswoman.

She added: “She will be made redundant…on 30 June 2013. We anticipate and hope that a number of our staff will have found new jobs to go to when they are made redundant from the Arts Council, as we have many staff who are very talented who we will be sorry to lose.

“However, this does not affect their entitlement to a redundancy payment, which is to compensate them for their enforced employment termination by the Arts Council and is their contractual right.”

The spokeswoman said she could not give a figure for Stark’s redundancy payment because calculations can change up until the payment is made, but said it would be published once it is paid.

Asked whether there is any plan in place for Stark to take on the HHPP role in a permanent, paid capacity once her sabbatical ends, the spokeswoman said that was a matter for HHPP.

She also confirmed that Tony Hall was aware of the arrangement when the board of HHPP appointed Stark to her new role. Arts Professional, the website which first reported the news, suggested that this could cause embarrassment to Hall as he prepares to take up his new role as director-general of the BBC. The BBC has already come under fire for its decision to pay Hall’s predecessor, George Entwistle, a ‘golden goodbye’ totalling £450,000, and the National Audit Office is now investigating severance pay at the Corporation.

Civilsociety.co.uk asked the Arts Council whether Stark thought it was right, in light of the cuts to the Arts Council budget, to claim a redundancy payment from ACE when she has already started in a new role. The spokeswoman responded:

“Andrea has not started a new job, she is undertaking a paid sabbatical which is her contractual right. The funds for redundancy payments come from a pre-determined pool of funding allocated to us by DCMS which is to be used only for this purpose. Redundancy payments are therefore not money which would otherwise be going to the arts. In light of the above I don’t think it would be appropriate to put this question to Andrea.”