COUNCIL PUBLISHES REDUNDANCY INFORMATION

Nottinghamshire County Council has published details of redundancy payments confirmed so far for the year 2010/11, as part of its wider budget proposals. The first phase of voluntary redundancies to help address the budget reductions has been initiated. As part of the first wave the Council has fulfilled its commitment to reduce significantly the number of managers and management tiers throughout the Council in order to become more efficient, less bureaucratic and to bring the people running the services closer to the people who receive them. This phase of redundancies will savethe Council £13.8m in wage costs every year from now on. To meet the cost of redundancy the Council will incur a one off cost of £10.9m in the current financial year on redundancy payments for 433 people, this will be met from Council budget under-spends, reserves and balances.
The redundancy costs in this first wave are higher than the average because of the number of senior and middle managers that are leaving the organisation at the end of March and the number of staff with long service who are taking voluntary redundancy.
Chief Executive, Mick Burrows, told The Local News: “All responsible organisations, public or private sector, who are seeking to reduce their workforce face one-off redundancy costs and budget accordingly.
“The payments reflect the person’s salary and their number of years service, all our payments are in line the Council’s agreed redundancy policy and conditions. There are no golden handshakes or additional payments.
“The Council is committed to reducing management and running costs in order to ensure better value for money public services.
“Unfortunately we know the scale of the changes we have to make will inevitably result in further voluntary and where necessary compulsory redundancies, we are doing everything possible to protect services.”