Newcastle City Council dubbed a 'sinking ship' as employee survey shows morale at 'rock bottom'

Newcastle City Council has been branded a "sinking ship" with staff morale at "rock bottom" according to a staff survey.

Responses included employees saying that a "wall of secrecy" had been put up amongst the leadership, and there were concerns about the amount of people in senior roles who had left in recent months.

The comments come as part of a Local Government Association (LGA) review into the council's performance, something that had been called for by the Civic Centre's new leaders

Newcastle City Council has experienced significant change recently, which has included a switch in chief executive and the long serving Labour leader Nick Forbes being deselected and replaced with Nick Kemp.

The online survey revealed staff fears over a new more "inexperienced" leadership taking over and that a high staff turnover was a problem.

Many responses voiced colleagues as overworked and that the effects of the pandemic on staff had not been taken into account, but that the council was generally a"supportive and caring employer."

There was praise in the survey answers however for the "committed" council workforce which go above and beyond to ensure services are delivered.

The improvement in communication with city residents and staff via social media was also complimented.

Newcastle City Council said the LGA's findings from the so-called 'peer challenge' would be used to form an action plan for improvement.

A spokesperson said: "Newcastle City Council's new leadership team invited the Local Government Association (LGA) to help us understand how we are performing across a range of areas including our leadership of place, financial performance, culture and governance."

It continued: "Peer challenges are an important tool to enable local authorities to reflect and improve.

"An independent report will be published following the challenge with recommendations for improvements and reflections on where we're doing well."

The LGA will be invited back in six months to reflect on the progress made.

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