Shropshire Council on the way to £60m savings
Wednesday 20th October 2010, 2:30PM BST.
Shropshire Council is well on the way to finding a massive £60 million in savings.
So far this year it has found nearly £10 million to make up for grants it lost just after the coalition Government took power.
And Shirehall bosses have already identified £12.5 million in savings for next year, though the council’s budget will not actually be approved until February.
Chief executive Kim Ryley said today: “The council’s current planning assumptions are based on the expectation of needing to reduce our spending as a result of an expected cut of at least 25 per cent in Government funding for Shropshire Council over the next three to four years.
“Significant savings have already been identified and agreed by the council for the next year.
“No decisions have yet been made about further savings required in future years.”
Council leaders have repeatedly said they will protect front line services by making the organisation much leaner and cutting bureaucracy.
Drastically
Senior management posts are being drastically cut to save about £3 million a year.
Overall about 1,300 council jobs are expected to be lost, though the authority is trying to avoid compulsory redundancies.
In five years’ time it is expected to be a radically different organisation to what it was when it came into being in April 2009.
A vision of the transformation is contained in the recently published blueprint “Creating a Better Future Together”.
It sets what chief executive Kim Ryley describes as the framework for an “ambitious major programme of change”.
At the plan’s heart is a strong emphasis on working at a local level, based on the market towns, with strong partnerships, and much closer co-operation and sharing of resources between the council and various agencies.
Services will be shaped around each of the market towns and surrounding areas but within a clear set of minimum standards for all parts of the county.
There is a pledge that front line services will be given the power and resources to make decisions on the best form of service delivery for each part of Shropshire.
Managers and staff will work in teams made up of staff from a range of different services, and from other local service organisations.
Service teams will operate as “business units” and managers will be expected to have “commerciality and entrepreneurship”.
There is also a clear message that the council in future will no longer be responsible for delivering all the services it currently provides.
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Savings? Cuts.
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And of course the managers have moved down a tier to save their jobs and make the lowest paid redundant.Just the sceptic in me.
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it was about time the council started being more cost efficient,
shame it took the thaught of job’s on the line to get them to do it.
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I keep hearing rumours of lots of little shanannigans as the senior managers and non- jobs scramble to protect themselves at the expense of people far lower down the chain.
This lot will cut services before they cut the people supposedly managing them.
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Glad that the trolls have not hit the page yet, with the usual council-basing rhetoric and hot air about non-jobs, blah blah, gold-plated pensions, blah blah. I think that we have seen enough of that at every Daily Mail inspired piece of non-journalism.
Lets face it now; savings are going to mean cuts. Despite the popular picture painted in the media of bloated public service, Shropshire Council does offer a very good service and does seem to be pretty lean in terms of spending. I do admit that while things could be better, I really fear for the front line services that we do take for granted – it is more than just emptying the bins. Schools, Social Services, cleaning the roads, paying Housing and Council Tax Benefit, planning, environmental health and a whole host more.
The Con-Dem administration is taking a huge gamble which I hope will bring the country back towards solvency; but I do honestly believe that things really are not as bad as the government and media would have us believe!
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Generally, I’d agree with Marcus. Shropshire Council does seem to be far from the worse-run local authorities. There ARE a considerable number of non-jobs though, many of which were apparently ‘required’ by the last Government.
If services that are taken for granted suddenly disappear or go downhill, people will notice. You know what they say – “you don’t miss them ’til they’re gone’.
And there is a human cost here which cannot be ignored or underestimated. *No-one* knows what is around the corner for their jobs, whether they are in the public or private sector.
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with making the lowest paid redundant how about giving council tax payers a reduction in council tax.
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SACK THEM ALL!!! they never answer the phone any way – i dont have kids at school, i pay 2 grand a year what do i get for it NOTHING, go on get rid of the lot of it I wouldnt miss it
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Close all the schools, we don’t need them anyway because Debs doesn’t have any kids..
And while their at it we can just open the Hospitals when she gets ill, theres no point otherwise..
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Prseumably Debs builds all her own roads as well
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no doubt she doesnt ever produce any waste either ?
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stupid comments
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Debs doesn’t have her refuse collected, her roads salted, use a library or want the next generation educated then? Please stop and think before you write such rubbish.
And please remember that many of these people are decent, hardworking, tax paying people who are going to lose their jobs because of the greed of the world banks.
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Yeh thats clever, sack them all, you may not have kids at school Debs but rather alot of other folk do and needless to say care about the education for their children who are at school/are going to school in the near future.
As for all of the other services lets hope that you or your family never have to rely on the help of social services for example one day, the workload of social workers and their teams are stretched as it is with their caseloads and this is going to get worse with the proposed cuts, yet the demand for services will continue to rise, these people will be forced to live in vulnerable situations which are not safe or humain and will be forced to pay for their care privately at an unbelieveble price and this is not fair.
Council tax though annoying for everyone provides help with education, social care, policing on the streets, street cleaning,etc,etc. Take it away and you’ll have a bigger queue at the benefits desk, vulnerable people, anti social behaviour/crime on every street corner and filthy littered streets…the list goes on. Face it youv’e got to pay council tax to sustain in a liveable community.
Those who cheer at the thought of redundancies at Shropshire Council have obviously not thought about the fact that these non jobbers will be forced into the private sector to look for work which will reduce the overall number of job opportunities for those trying to find a job now.
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£60 million is only 10% of the councils budget, yet the government is cutting 27% over 4 years from councils grants, so i can only conclude that the council has plans to find 17% extra (more than its cutting) around £100m in extra fees, charges and crucially of course hiking council tax, this is unacceptable when people are in recession
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Welcome to the real world public sector workers – now you will suffer like we all did
HA HA
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Noting the timing of your comment there Gethin, aren’t you missing Cebeebies? Give the computer back to mummy and daddy and leave these threads to the adults. Same goes for you Phil Mathews.
Trolls – so sad and pathetic.
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Was going to make a similar comment well said Mark
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Totally agree with you Mark is Gethin Welsh for stupid?
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Take that slackers – no more 9 to 5 cushy non jobs in the office – get out and sweep the streets or get sacked
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Oh dear another wally on the threard
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But that’s just it Phil – many public sector workers DO sweep the streets, collect our refuse etc. Good grief some people are SO thick!
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i hope the cheif executive takes a paycut for starters! that and the richest councillors, the whole top team should lead by example
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tory cuts to keep their banker friends in business – it was the banks that caused this mess, let them be nationalized until they have paid every penny back
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Shouldnt be too hard, there is alot of waste at Shropshire CC, especially in the educational section, its just not business like with salaries for teachers out of step with other comparable graduates, also leave, hours, sickness etc has to be addressed to do more with less, most teachers only work about 100 days of the year!!! thats a full time salary for less than part time work, no wonder the councils bankrupt
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Sorry, whether or not I agree with your line of thinking, I do hate silly generalisations by people who are clearly clueless. Teachers work more like 200 days a year. Plus a fair number of them will still be marking and preparing lessons at 10pm.
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there are 365 days in a year
- minus 104 weekends
- minus 30 days paid annual leave
- minus 8 days (average) off sick
- minus 40 days summer holidays
- minus 14 days Xmas holidays
- minus 21 days half terms
EQUALS 148 DAYS WORK EACH YEAR
OR 217 NOT WORKING EACH YEAR
thats 40% of the year working ; 60% off
In the private sector you get 21 days leave, ok you get weekends but you still spend 240+ days at work each year, almost twice as much!
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Something doesn’t add up.
- 104 weekend days: Correct.
- 30 days paid annual leave: Incorrect. Teachers don’t receive leave over and above regular school holidays.
- 8 days (average) off sick: A rather gross generalisation. For comparison purposes, you need to call it zero.
- 40 days summer holidays: More like 29 working days, when you exclude bank holidays. I just counted them on the calendar.
- 14 days Xmas holidays: It’s actually 9 working days, when you remove bank holidays and weekends.
- 21 days half term: I make it 14. There are three half terms and five working days in a week. One half term day falls on a bank holiday.
- You forgot to include the Easter Holiday, which is 9 working days.
- 3 bank holidays fall outside of school holiday times, so teachers get these off too.
In total, I make that 175 days not working, which is far fewer than the 217 you’re claiming.
In the private sector, paid leave can be a low as 21 days, but more commonly it’s 25 days, building to 30 days with each additional year of service, plus bank holidays, so can be as high as 38 days paid leave. With weekends, that’s 142 days. Not as much as teachers, but nowhere near the difference you suggested.
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Well said Org. Jake. I am a teacher and I have not had a sick day for over a year now. Further you have to consider when ill that you do not want the children to get it
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newsflash : – £60million aint enough, osbourne 1 – pickles 0, the fat man has had the biggest cuts of all and its all going to come the way of shropshire council now, so kiss your libraries and schools goodbye
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these cuts aere going to cause alot of pain in shropshire because its relatively high council tax already so very little room to manouver, telford or other areas could simply put £100 on council tax to cover all the cuts and they would still have lower tax than shropshire
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I would love to know the point of the Shrewsbury Town Council. Costs a fortune for a few flowers and cutting some grass. Totally overloaded with councillors and staff and even has the equivalent of a Chief Executive on a grossly overated salary. Get rid and amalgamate with the Shropshire council without any additional staff, councillors or funds.
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#14 Aren’t you forgetting that a day in the school world is actually quite short compared to other equally qualified professions in the public sector.
The quality of homework mine had from school was often hurriedly printed out so that sometimes the end of a page was left off leaving the proposed work not making sense and was all from standard teaching programme sources.It is more like administration that could be done by anyone.
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