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Ex-Shrewsbury mayor calls on Shropshire council leaders to quit
Friday 8th July 2011, 6:50PM BST.
Shirehall - the home of Shropshire Council
A former mayor of Shrewsbury has called on Shropshire Council’s chief executive and leader to resign over their handling of an enforced pay cut on local authority staff.
David Farmer, who is a current Shrewsbury town councillor, said he had been “very, very angry” to hear that 6,500 members of staff had been told by letter they would lose their jobs unless they agreed to a 5.4 per cent pay cut.
Letters were sent by the authority to all its employees this week stating that they will be dismissed on September 30, but will keep their jobs on a lower salary if they agree to the reduction and new terms and conditions.
Councillor Farmer said the situation had been badly handled and he called upon the chief executive Kim Ryley and leader of the council Keith Barrow to step down.
“From the moment I heard I was very, very angry. I know a lot of the staff who transferred across from the Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council to the unitary authority.
“This is the final insult,” he said.
“Kim Ryley should resign now and so should Keith Barrow for sending such letters.
“Why did the elected councillors of the Shropshire unitary council agree to such terms? I feel the tail is wagging the dog within the council and it is time this was stopped.
“If this had been tried in industry, the business would have already been brought to a halt.”
Councillor Barrow said: “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion and I’ve given David Farmer a call to talk about his concerns and explain the background to the proposals which I don’t think he was fully aware of.”
He said everyone from the chief executive down had received one of the letters explaining the council’s plan.
Unison, the union which represents about 40 per cent of the workforce at Shropshire Council, has pledged to ballot for strike action after its executive committee held a three-and-a-half hour meeting to discuss its reaction to the letters.
Alan James, Shropshire branch secretary for Unison, said the union had a “clear mandate to ballot for industrial action”.
By Chris Burn
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Strike and then what??? scrap the whole idea?. What will happen is strike, lose a days pay, and then sign result end up with even less money madness.
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Don’t count your chickens. With the Conservative ex mayor of Shrewsbury coming out like this it shows that there are severe splits over this issue. I strongly suspect that the cabinet put the rest of the Conservative group under a three line whip in relation to their actions. Councillors may now decide to vote with their conscience rather than follow dictated lines.
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1 small market town Councillor is not going to change a thing , it is for the good of the county, and the country for that matter.
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I think the council may have bitten off a bit too much.
The unions at a national level will throw all their resources into fighting the legality, the process, the timetable etc – if Shrops gets away with this other councils will follow suit.
And don’t imagine that Shrops has got the legality and process right – it can’t even get the consultation process for the closure of Wakeman school right.
The best barristers will have a field day with the cack handedness of this council.
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why dont the 65oo employees just call his bluff and not sign.Then worse case scenario 400 are made redundant at least they will have
their redundancy money.Also thery may have a case as to why they have been chosen out of 6500 threatend.
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The letter states that employees not signing will not receive any redundancy payment. This is based on the Chief Executive defining the changes as minor alterations. As the changes affect a raft of areas across contracts, this definition is extremely dubious and quite a gamble.
It is evident that senior council managers are not willing to pay any redundancy pay and have chosen to define the changes as minor to avoid these payments. These are not the actions of responsible managers. Making 500 employees redundant would cost about £7 million
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How much expense claims have the councillors who sit on various committees given up? to reduce this deficit.
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5% – their basic allowances have gone down from £12,000 each to £11,400.
For those who have a “Special Responsibility Allowance” for extra duties (eg the Leader, Cabinet members etc) there has also been a 5% reduction because the SRAs are a multiplier of the basic allowance.
Saving on the basic allowance = £44,400
Savings on SRAs = £14,250
Its a drop in the ocean compared to what they will save on reducing staff salaries
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They did, however, double there allowances in 2009, if they reverted to those allowances and then take 5% off – and then reduced the pay of the Chief Executive to his predecessors pay and take 5% off that then they may just understand what effect they are having on everyone else – it may only still be a drop in the ocean – but a very important one for everybody concerned
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David farmer well done somebody in a council capacity to stand up to the dynamic duo.Albeit an EX council representative
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Did I hear David Farmer say that he intends to DO WITHOUT his town councillor’s allowance?
After all it all started with out of pocket expenses and has now evolved into a two tier county and town councillors system.
County councillors £12,000 per annum guaranteed before other expenses added on.
Town councillors £3,500 per annum.
Not employees of the council any of them except Kim Ryley who will expect and get a huge golden handshake like his predecessors if he does go.
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Could the Star run a poll to see how much additional council tax people would be prepared to pay to retain the staff on their current salaries? another 10% next year anyone?
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Could the Star run a poll to see who thinks it is right or fair that councillors voted to increase their allowances by 100% but now think its OK to cut the pay of the workers?
(oswestrian is a county councillor)
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Where do you get the figure of 10% from? If you are a councillor as ‘salopian’ suggests then I would hope your maths and reasoning is a little better than plucking random numbers from the air. And if it isn’t how about suggesting to your fellow councillors that you reduce your allowances to the pre unitary figures and then taking 5.4% off that, then how about reducing the Chief Executive salary to £160,000 and taking 5.4% off that – you would all still be generously rewarded but you may at least notice the difference and perhaps have a little better understanding of what you are asking of your workforce
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Before reducing the salaries of all Council Staff, have they, for example, stopped operation of its known loss making restaurants such as “The Boat House”, Ellesmere – or would this simply be asking too much?
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well said mr farmer as a senior officer on the inside i can agree that since kim ryley arrived there has been a collapse in staff morale and productivity and endless wasted meetings to discuss harvard management text books and theoretical models, gaant charts and venn diagrams all frankly absolute BULL imported academic practice from the class room which is completely unapplicable in the real world
now the cheif officer at telford is resigning there is an opportunity for a reshuffle at the top to save everyone money and get a decent sense of leadership strategy and direction of travel for the council
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Well said!
I too am amazed at the archaic methods in which Shropshire council still perform their day to day duties. Keeps some in a job I guess but at what cost/benefit.
Something like…
Lets call a meeting to discuss how many meetings are needed to discus….. what are we here to discuss?
I sincerely hope that Kim Keith and the other members of the exec and cabinet memebrs also stand to a have a 5.4% cut?
As a number of the senior exec actually reside in Cheshire, it makes me wonder just how committed they are to our county.
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It is very interesting to see that these commments have been made at this time.
It may be relevant that this split in the Tory ranks comes within days of the decision by Suffolk Council to part company with their equally controversial Chief Executive Andrea Hill at a cost of £218K. She arrived 3 years ago with a radical plan to externalise Council services, which resulted in the collapse of staff morale, with the final sorry chapter being the suicide of their Chief Legal Officer, and formal complaints of bullying and harrassment against the Chief Executive.
The resulting investigation carried out by external Solicitors cost the Council a further £250K.
The Leader of the Council has now resigned, and the Chief Executive has left having been on gardening leave since Easter – Total cost to the Council Tax payers – £0.5 million!
Shropshire you have been warned what may be coming next. I just hope that common sense returns to the Shirehall before we face a similarly expensive debacle.
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Shirehall should have a name change replace the R with a T :))))
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#10 been there already way before Arndrea (as she liked to be pronounced) Hill came along.
Remember our fight to stop the unitary resulting a judicial review?
That cost us a referendum, lost judicial review, golden handshake to departing chief executive and generous pension to following fill in chief executive only a year off retirement.
Well over half a squillion of our money wasted.
Still the reduced number of counillors saved us loads, but hang on we have two sorts now, town and county and as they all doubled their allowances so we never saved a penny.
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While I agree there was a lot of money wasted by Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council – and the Unitary Councillors awarding themselves huge increases in allowances, ‘we’ have saved quite a lot of pennies – over £11 million I believe
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Mr Farmer I’m tired.
I’m tired that as a local business owner I’ve had to reduce my pay by 30% from my 2008 salary. I accept this.
I’m tired of paying business rates to the council and not even getting my rubbish collected.
I’m tired of paying for public sector pensions and yet have to provide for my own.
I’m tired of above inflation increases for parking in the town centre.
I’m tired of visiting the Shire Hall last year and finding 10 expensive office chairs in good condition in a skip due to an office refurb.
I’m tired of finding 4 ‘solid oak’ tables 18 months old in an auction last year due to a Shrewsbury council department that had closed down- if you’re interested they went for 80 quid.
I’m tired of stopping at the traffic lights installed at great expense on the Salop Caravans roundabout that don’t appear to have the slightest effect on queues.
I’m tired of submitting a freedom of information request and not getting a response.
But most of all Mr Farmer- I’m tired of hearing how an ex mayor previously wined and dined at my expense now has the gaul to effectively say to the people of Shrewsbury, for whom he works, that they must pay for the ongoing mismanagement of an organisation that had it been private would have been bust some time ago.
It appears a cut in council pay/benefits is long overdue- I for one can’t afford the previously usual above inflation increases to household council tax.
With Regards
David Barlow
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