By Nick Mann | 7 December 2011
Councils should take action sooner rather than later to cut their workforce costs without having to make widespread compulsory redundancies, the Audit Commission said today.
In a report published jointly with the Local Government Association, Work in progress; meeting local needs with lower workforce costs, the auditors explain that further council job losses are ‘inevitable’ in the face of continuing government funding cuts. An estimated 145,000 council jobs have gone in the past year, they note.
But commission chair Michael O’Higgins told Public Finance that councils that explore ways of cutting workforce costs now would have a ‘better chance’ of avoiding compulsory job losses.
Among the alternatives to redundancy explored in the report are cutting down on staff working hours and redeploying people to different departments where possible.
The report also recommends councils freeze recruitment to all non-frontline posts and use the most ‘cost-effective’ mechanisms for employing agency and contracted staff.
Authorities should also consider how they can share services with neighbouring local authorities or potentially withdraw some services in a bid to preserve others, the report says.
‘We’re not saying there’s one best way to do it because local labour markets are different – but what we are saying is there are a range of ways of doing it,’ O’Higgins explained.
He added: ‘If you have to reduce costs by 10% it doesn’t mean cutting numbers by 10%. Cutting hours may be less significant than cutting one job in five.’
Sir Merrick Cockell, chair of the LGA, said that councils were ‘ahead of the game’ when it came to making savings, but agreed that job losses were inevitable given the size of the funding cuts.
‘Where these are necessary, councils are working hard to minimise disruption to staff and services through restructuring, shared services and outsourcing,’ he said.
‘They are also looking at how they invest in and reward people to ensure they continue to deliver the most efficient public services possible.’
