A £30,000 advertising campaign is being designed to find a new chief executive who “believes in Basildon” and can support the council’s vision of a “better future for the town”.

The council has awarded a contract to Tile Hill recruitment firm to draw up an advertising campaign for a new chief executive following the retirement of Scott Logan in June.

Mr Logan, who received a salary of £199,202 and held the role of chief executive for seven years, was replaced by Kim Bromley-Derry as interim chief executive and Owen Sparks as interim of head of paid service.

Now, the council is stepping up its hunt for a permanent replacement to help deliver on the new Labour administrations vision for Basildon and its town centre masterplan to create new homes and more businesses.

Jessica Power, Labour councillor in charge of jobs, skills and local economy has said the council is aiming for someone “ambitious” who “believes in Basildon.”

She said: “We have gone out for recruitment and that has gone out this week, what we want is a really ambitious person, someone who believes in Basildon and someone who can be prosperous, forward thinking and transformative, on a permanent basis. We consider all candidates, there may be someone sitting there now who is the perfect candidate, but we need to give the opportunity and give it to someone who really believes in our vision and who would work with is to deliver the plans, they must believe.

“We have director positions going up next week.”

Deputy leader, Adele Brown, added the council needs to rebuild after losing senior officers in a sweeping set of redundancies voted for by the prior administration.

She said: “We were left in a situation where we had no senior directors except from one. The council lacks strategic direction and part of this campaign is about getting those strategic directors.

“Everything will be done and it does take time to get the right recruitment people and the right time, it is a long process and we were left in that position, it was irresponsible. Since then we have tried to put the council back together with Owen and Kim as interims, Owen has been phenomenal. Things have been slower, not through the officers being unwilling or not putting in the hours, they lacked capacity due to restructuring.”