Redundancy savings

Apr 25 2008 by David Norbury, Chester Chronicle

MORE than twice as many staff applied to leave the city council than are being allowed to go.

The move followed a requirement for additional staff savings to be achieved to help meet a target of £665,000 from reviews of council services. Enhanced redundancy was on offer to anyone with more than two years service.

Some 77 staff lined up to go but only 32 will be allowed to clear their desks by the required date at the end of next month according to a report by council leader Cllr Margaret Parker (Con, Mickle Trafford), her resources chief Cllr Richard Short (Con, Curzon & Westminster) and people boss Cllr Arthur Harada (Con, Lache Park).

The bill will be £1,106,489 of which £451,873 is pensions and £654,617 redundancy costs.

But with savings estimated at £943,700, the move will pay for itself in just over 13 months.

The council argues the redundancies will not be detrimental to the delivery of services.

Each post has been assessed to see if the redundancy would affect issues such as the provision of services or if there would then be insufficient staff with the right skills to carry on if others were off ill. Nine of the redundancies are in customer services, three in culture & community, three in environment, seven in development, seven in people, performance & improvement and three in resources.