It has been confirmed that Birmingham City Council chief executive Stephen Hughes is likely to remain off work sick until at least the end of this month.

His duties as Head of the Paid Service, in charge of 25,000 staff, will be taken over temporarily by Paul Dransfield, the city’s Strategic Director for resources.

A formal announcement about Mr Hughes was issued by council leader Sir Albert Bore two hours after Chamberlain News broke the story on Twitter.

In a letter to staff, Sir Albert said: “As you will be aware, the Chief Executive is currently away from work recovering from a recent illness and will not be back until the end of September.

“In his absence, Paul Dransfield, Strategic Director of Corporate Resources, will assume Stephen’s responsibilities as “Head of Paid Service”, supported by all members of the senior management team.

“All members of the senior management team will cover for Stephen’s internal and external commitments as required.

“I hope you will join me in wishing Stephen a speedy return to good health.”

Details of Mr Hughes’ illness have not been revealed. He has been off work for several weeks.

Mr Hughes, who has a salary of just under £200,000, became Chief Executive in May 2006

He had been Interim Head of Paid Service from August 2005, when former Chief Executive, Lin Homer, left the council to join the Home Office.

The council website states that onje of Mr Hughes’s key aims is to ensurde that Birmingham people “succeed economically” and that “other public agencies and business need to work together to ensure the future prosperity of the city”.

Mr Hughes joined the city council as Strategic Director of Resources in February 2004.

Before coming to Birmingham he worked for the London Borough of Brent as Director of Finance. Previous roles include a secondment to Whitehall to lead on council tax and business rates policy, Head of Finance at Islington Council and policy work around local government finance at the AMA and ALA.