COUNTY council bosses have come under fire for creating a new £17,379 Cabinet post while cutting frontline services and 1,400 jobs.

Councillor Stephen Reid, 60, has been appointed “executive member for strategic development”.

Tory council leader Ken Thornber said the senior post was needed to reshape services amid public spending cuts, but opposition councillors have slammed it as “jobs for the boys”.

The new Cabinet role, which started on January 1, had not been publicly announced by the council press office or debated by backbenchers.

Instead Councillor Thornber informed councillors of the additional executive post by email.

It comes as the local authority is cutting service budgets by eight per cent for the second year running in a bid to save £100m over two years.

Councillor Keith House, leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition group, said the new Cabinet post had come “out of the blue”.

He said: “When the county council is reducing budgets and shedding many hundreds of jobs, now is not the time to increase the size of the Cabinet and create another job for a Conservative backbencher at taxpayers’ expense.”

He called for the independent pay panel, which approves councillor allowances, to scrutinise the new appointment, saying that with reduced staff numbers and budget, it ought to be possible to run the council with a smaller Cabinet, not a larger one.

But Councillor Reid defended his position, saying the role would include selling county services to other local authorities and joint working with public bodies such as Hampshire police to cut costs.

He said: “The challenge faced by all councils is trying to maintain levels of services at a time of financial stringency. If the job works out as I expect it to, it will be generating more [money] than it costs.”

Cabinet members are paid £17,379 on top of a basic backbench allowance of £12,033.

Nine out of ten of the executive members are men.

Cllr Reid, who also sits on Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, received a total £37,692 in allowances and expenses from the two councils in 2010-11.

In addition to his basic allowance at the county council, he received a special responsibility allowance of £11,586 as chairman of the children and young people’s select committee.

Mr Reid also works as a senior consultant at computer giant Hewlett Packard.

The county council paid £1.4m in allowances and expenses to 78 councillors in 2010-11.

In the email to councillors, Cllr Thornber said a corporate services review had identified the need for a new strategic development role at a senior level.