Cornwall Council to cut hundreds of jobs to save money
Cornwall Council will cut hundreds of jobs after revealing it needs to reduce its wage bill by £18million.
An email sent to councillors on behalf of council leader Linda Taylor explained they need to make the cuts by the end of March 2022.
It said this will be done by continuing a recruitment freeze and deleting vacancies and inviting staff to take voluntary redundancy.
The note did not say how many jobs would be cut but it suggested saving £18m from the current staff spend of around £200m.
It said compulsory redundancies “will be unavoidable” but added measures will be taken to minimise them.
Conservative leader Cllr Taylor has previously warned there will be “tough decisions” ahead while deputy leader David Harris, responsible for finance, has also warned “there’s no money”.
The email to councillors reads: “At this stage, we have set a target to reduce our workforce spend by £18m by 31 March 2022, against a current workforce spend of £200m.
“This is our best current estimate of the financial reduction we will need to make from our workforce to meet our budget gap, and may change as work progresses to set out MTFP (medium term financial plan) over the coming months.
“We will be taking all measures to reduce the number of compulsory redundancies that may have to be made, starting with the recruitment freeze that is already in place, permanently deleting vacancies held in our staffing establishment, reducing non-essential spend and there will be opportunities for voluntary redundancy in the coming months.
“We will also be working to increase the agility of our organisation to deploy staff internally where posts are held as a result of the recruitment freeze and with partner organisations across Cornwall to support staff with redeployment and outplacement as we anticipate that compulsory redundancies will be unavoidable.
“At this stage, we are not able to translate the £18m workforce budget reduction figure into a defined number of roles, as a lot will depend on how the reductions are made and the types of staff that will be impacted, and how much of the reduction can be made through removing vacancies."
Credit: Richard Whitehouse, Local Democracy Reporter