Highly-paid Newcastle Council staff to leave in reshuffle

Jun 27 2009 by Jon Tunney, The Journal

BIG earners at Newcastle City Council are being axed in a money-saving reshuffle. Bosses are preparing to slash the jobs of nine senior managers earning more than £60,000 a year.

The reshuffle will see 60 managers’ roles axed from the chief executive’s office alone – saving £2.9m a year.

Chief Executive Barry Rowland said the cuts were needed because of fears of big funding cuts over the next three years. It will see 510 posts slashed, saving £169m over the next five years.

The first wave of staff who have agreed a redundancy package with the council will leave their jobs next month, with more to go in September.

Council bosses say they have worked with staff and trade unions to make sure workers are consulted on the changes.

Mr Rowland said: “We’re one of a handful of local authorities undertaking this and the targets we’re trying to achieve are more than we have attempted ever before.

“We are anticipating a significant reduction in public sector funding in the next three years and that deficit has to be tackled. We identified that our usual approach of salami slicing, taking an incremental approach to cost-cutting, was no longer sustainable.

“Rather than reduce services or cut the quality of services we have decided to take a deeper cut of efficiency opportunities and create a council which is fit for purpose. The reason we are seeing such big reductions in areas like management and administration is to protect frontline services.”

Labour leader Nick Forbes has put forward a motion to next week’s full meeting of the Liberal Democrat-run council accusing the council of lack of leadership and saying morale among staff is poor.

He said: “It’s clear there are a lot of unhappy staff within the council and my fear is that this will impact on service delivery. A lot of staff are looking over their shoulders worried for their jobs.

“I hope the promises of a more efficient and better-run council can be met without the need for any compulsory redundancies.”

Coun Peter Allen, Liberal Democrat executive member for resources, said: “The reason we’re doing the transformation programme is not because the finances are in a mess. It’s because we know there will be major changes for councils in the future.”

Kenny Bell, branch secretary of Unison, said hoped all the redundancies would be voluntary.

He said: “It’s inevitable that with the scale of changes we’re going through there will be some discontent. There are pockets of this and morale is low. But it’s going better than we would have expected.

“No-one will have to leave the authority if they don’t want to and people who step down a pay band will be protected for four years.”

Council bosses hope the restructure will be approved at a meeting on Monday.

We identified that our usual approach of salami slicing, taking an incremental approach to cost-cutting, was no longer sustainable