Bassetlaw: Council announces proposals for job cuts in bid to save another £1.45 million

Bassetlaw Council has announced plans for job cuts

A total of 21 posts are under threat and some services are likely to be affected but at this stage, the council are unable to say which will be hit the most, although the only service that has gone to date is pest control, which finished 18 months ago.

The authority has already made savings over £7.89 million over the last eight years.

But they now need to find another £1.45 million in savings by March 2016.

“Taking into account the reduction in funding, it was always going to be difficult to avoid compulsory redundancies and sadly, for the first time in 40 years, we have now reached a tipping point,” said chief executive Neil Taylor.

“Out of the total amount of savings needed, we have identified £900,00 in non-staff savings and £150,000 in voluntary redundancies.”

“But that still leaves us with another £400,000 to find and that will have to come from cuts to staffing budgets.”

Eight people will be placed on immediate risk of redundancy after the review reports are submitted to Cabinet on 1st July, with one other post facing reduced hours.

In addition, other services will see numbers of full-time employees within their teams cut .

An additional 12 vacant posts, some of which are part-time, will be also recommended for deletion.

The council’s redeployment policy means those placed at risk of redundancy will be given the opportunity window to be redeployed to other jobs that are vacant in the council,

This redeployment window will be extended to the end of March 2015.

“We will undertake to our best endeavours to redeploy as many people as we can,” said Len Hull, head of human resources.

“It is important to stress that these are proposals at this stage and they will be subject to the appropriate consultation mechanisms with trade unions before coming back before cabinet at a later date.”

Talks have already been going on between the council and unions.

However, the formal consultation process between unions and staff at risk, will officially begin after the July cabinet meeting and is expected to last for at least a month.

The final decisions, on which posts are to be deleted will come after 7th October when the cabinet meets again to ratify or modify decisions made in July.