A CHILD protection boss quit her job with a six-figure pay-off, only to be rehired straight afterwards on almost £1,000 a day.

The Government’s deputy children’s commissioner Sue Berelowitz, who lives in Brighton with her husband, took voluntary redundancy from her £99,333-a-year post on April 30.

She received a pay-off worth £134,000.

But a national newspaper has reported that she was then rehired as a consultant to do the same work she was handling in her former role.

The 61-year-old, who was previously deputy director of children services at West Sussex County Council is to be paid £960 a day under the new deal and will work for up to nine days a month.

This means she could earn almost the same money she made as a full-time employee.

The Treasury has launched an inquiry into how the deal was agreed and the Chancellor has pledged to tighten up on the sums being paid out by public bodies, with a cap of £95,000 on redundancy payments.

Keith Vaz, the former head of the home affairs select committee of the Commons, was reported as saying Mrs Berelowitz’s payoff was “totally unacceptable”.

He added: “There is no justification for a public official to receive such a huge sum of money to then continue to do the same work.”

In the wake of high-profile child abuse cases in Rochdale and Rotherham in 2012, Mrs Berelowitz wrote a report stating there was no evidence of a particular issue with Asian gangs.

In 2013 The Argus revealed through an investigation that scores of young girls were being sexually exploited in Brighton and Hove. In that story, Mrs Berelowitz warned that there "isn't a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited”.

She added: “It is very sadistic, it is very violent and it is very ugly."

Mrs Berelowitz declined to comment when The Argus contacted her while the Office of the Children's Commissioner did not respond to our request.

Background

SUE Berelowitz, born in South Africa, started out as a speech and language therapist before gaining a masters degree in social work from the University of Sussex.

In October 2008, she left her role as deputy director of children services at West Sussex County Council to become deputy Children’s Commissioner for England.

Mrs Berelowitz, in her last full-time job, was in charge of an inquiry into family child abuse, having previously presided over a two-year inquiry into children committing sexual assaults against each other.