It first announced its Innovation and Efficiency programme last September. Since then a number of announcements have been made by the current government, and the opposition parties. They have confirmed the council’s broad expectations.
Overall public spending is set to be reduced significantly during the five years from 2011 onwards. Some very large budgets seem likely to be at least partially protected (frontline health provision and schools) so the impact on the remainder of the public sector, including much of local government, will have to be greater – around 20%.
Rob Vincent, the council’s Chief Executive said: “We won’t know the detail of the reductions required until after the General Election but we are already planning for the future. I’m determined that we will use the next fifteen months to prepare well, for two reasons:
• Kirklees residents need us to emerge stronger as we make changes – we need to achieve more of what is vital for their well-being, with as little cost in delivery as possible
• We must make the necessary changes in ways that avoid damage to the lives of staff as far as we can: colleagues are highly committed to what they do and the problems are not of their making.
“Reducing costs by up to 20% will mean a significant reduction in numbers of staff, but we must do all we can to avoid compulsory redundancies.
“With that in mind we have today written to all our direct employees to see if any would be interested in taking voluntary severance terms over the next three years. When we have responses we will be trying to match those interested in taking voluntary terms with our analysis of where we will need to reduce the number of jobs. We will not be able to let everyone who expresses an interest go: many will be in jobs that will remain even as the changes are implemented. But we will certainly be looking to let colleagues go voluntarily where that will help us minimise the number of forced redundancies at a later stage.”
The council’s Director responsible for HR aspects of the Innovation and Efficiency programme, Cliff Stewart, added: “We have been working closely with the trade unions as the strategy has been developed. The invitation to employees to express interest in voluntary severance is part of a wider approach. We are also developing retraining arrangements so that staff can move into vacant jobs and we are not filling vacancies where work can be undertaken in other ways.”
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