70 council staff face job losses

Chief Executive of Rochdale Council, Roger Ellis says this is a "challenging time for everyone"

Seventy members of staff at Rochdale Borough Council are likely to be made redundant as part of the first phase of plans to save £50million in the next financial year.

The phase one proposals were approved by Councillors at a Cabinet meeting following a three month staff, trade union and public consultation.

An initial £8million of savings will be implemented from December, with a further £5 million of proposals deferred into the second phase of savings following feedback during the consultation.

As a result, a number of phase one decisions will not be made until February 2011.

Decisions (made 25 November 2010) include: 

• Reducing management related costs, including restructuring and deletion of posts
• Budget savings in core services (Legal/Human Resources/Finance/ Performance and Transformation)
• Reviewing schools Service Level Agreements (SLA’s)
• Reducing the Schools Improvement Team
• Removing the town twinning budget
• Reducing the weekly courier service
• Reducing the budget of the Rochdale Development Agency
• Reducing annual expenditure on library books
• Reducing management posts in the Library and Customer Access Services
• Reducing Children’s Fund Activity (activities for 8-13 year olds) 

These initial decisions will begin to be implemented from the beginning of December.

The decision on a reduction to the Link4Life budget related to the boroughs arts, heritage and Touchstones café has been deferred to phase 2 following public consultation.

Chief Executive Roger Ellis said that a lot of good ideas have been generated during the consultation: “I fully appreciate this is more unwelcome news at a generally unsettling time for many people. We are doing all we can to ensure staff are kept informed of decisions as they are made and we are continuing to work with the unions to minimise redundancies. This is a challenging time for everyone.”

Deputy Council Leader Ashley Dearnley said: “We need to find significant savings to our budget whilst continuing to deliver hundreds of essential services, so many budgets have had to be reduced and some spending has had to stop. We have made these decisions after listening carefully to the thoughts of residents, staff, partners and councillors. We are working closely with our partners in the drive for greater efficiency, and whilst we still need to make more savings, we want to keep redundancies to a minimum.”

Wendy Allison, Regional Organiser for Unison said: “Our view is that Rochdale has moved very very quickly bringing these cuts in.

“The Comprehensive Spending Review doesn’t start until next year. They (the Council) won’t know until December what their overall financial position is.”

Ms Allison added: “The Council has been extremely hasty in making redundancies and hasty in cutting services.

“We want them to take a more imaginative view.”

The Leader of the Labour party in Rochdale, Councillor Colin Lambert, said: “These cuts are not efficiencies they are cuts to meet instructions from central government to cut the spend of Rochdale MBC by at least £54million by 31 March 2011.

“Efficiencies are about saving money by doing things better and delivering differently. I am not convinced that the current Cabinet have approached the need for cuts properly. This salami slicing of budgets does not reassure anyone that the reductions in expenditure are in the right areas.

“I want to see front line services to residents protected at the highest possible standard and I believe we must look more seriously at what the Council does and how it does it.

“I hope we will see a more detailed review of the proposals which are in phase two and then we can review the outcome of phase one. The budget proposals for 2011/12 will have to be clear by the budget setting in February.”

Councillor Lambert added: “I want to see workers delivering actual jobs protected and services which residents need and want being saved.

“Just as nationally I want police officers on the street, not forced to retire, I want doctors and nurses saving lives on our hospital wards and not on the dole, I want to see fire-fighters and ambulance crews saving lives – not fighting to save their jobs.

“And locally I want people who work in the Council to keep our children safe, look after our elderly and most vulnerable, clean our streets and empty our bins.

“If we gain control in May 2011 we will still be forced to make cuts but our focus will be different and our approach will be different.” 

The second phase of council saving proposals announced earlier this month are now available for public consultation. To have your say you can call into your local library or council customer service centre, visit www.rochdale.gov.uk/yourviews or send your comments by post to Phase Two Public Consultation, Floor 6, Telegraph House, Baillie Street, Rochdale OL16 1JA.