Wolverhampton City Council’s chief executive Richard Carr is to leave his £120,000-a-year job, it was announced today.

It is expected that he will take over as chief executive of Central Bedfordshire Council in the autumn. It is the seventh council he has worked for and the fourth he has led as chief executive.

He said today: “The decision to leave Wolverhampton has been an extremely difficult one. I will miss the council, the city and its people enormously. But the opportunity to take on this exciting new challenge is too great for me to pass up.”

In July 2006 he succeeded Derrick Anderson at Wolverhampton, who left for a similar post at the London borough of Lambeth.

Mr Carr has been chief executive of Buckinghamshire’s Aylesbury Vale district council and worked at Cambridgeshire and East Cambridgeshire councils.