Council launches voluntary redundancy scheme to make further savings

Non-teaching staff at Shropshire Council are being given the opportunity to apply to take voluntary redundancy as the council looks to make further savings.

Continued Government funding cuts, increasing costs and an ever-increasing demand for essential services such as adult social care and children’s services, means that the council is facing a budget shortfall of around £59.3m over the next five years.

Launched on Monday (22 January 2018), the voluntary redundancy programme is just one of the ways the council plans to help address the funding gap up until 2020/21, as outlined in its Financial Strategy.

Clive Wright, Shropshire Council’s chief executive, said:

“It goes without saying that it would always be preferable to release staff that want to leave.

“As the organisation modernises and takes advantage of new digital technology and our investment in broadband across the county, the way we deliver work will change.

“Many of our back-office processes will become automated and our frontline services will be able to operate mostly out of centralised buildings. This will make us more efficient and most jobs will change. Overall there will unfortunately be some job losses.

“As we’ve said, allowing volunteers for redundancy has been our preference, rather than drawn out compulsory redundancies. We have found that volunteers for redundancy often go on to flourish outside of the council.

“Each application will be considered individually. We do however need to ensure that statutory services can continue to be delivered effectively, therefore not all of those staff who request to leave via voluntary redundancy will be able to do so.”

Any payments to those who leave as part of this process will be based on the existing redundancy policy.

The council plans to save £1 million before 31 March 2018, and then £9 million over the next two years through its voluntary redundancy process.

Currently there are no plans for compulsory redundancies, but if the savings identified cannot be achieved through this process, a compulsory redundancy programme may follow.