Councils slash wage bill to meet cuts
0Councils in England and Wales have reduced their gross annual pay bill by £1.4 billion to £24.3 billion for financial year 2011/2012.
According to the latest Local Government Earnings survey from the Local Government Agency the savings have been made by keeping salaries down, the use of efficient working (such as minimising overtime) and restructuring.
Since December 2010 local government has slimmed down by 214,000 jobs. Cuts have been made mostly through voluntary redundancies and not replacing workers upon retirement or leaving local government. The LGA does note, however, that a ‘significant’ number of compulsory redundancies has also been made.
The figures also reflect the rise of shared services, finding that 90% of councils employed fewer people in senior management posts or paid them less. Seventy nine percent of councils also reduced middle management cost.
Sir Steve Bullock, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Workforce Board, said “Slicing £1.4 billion from the paybill hasn’t been easy … It will be impossible to deliver the same savings again without another big reduction in the workforce which will inevitably involve a much higher proportion of compulsory redundancies. Frontline services will be hit and some of the services residents currently expect their council to deliver will have to be wound down.”
The frontloaded 28% cut in the funding councils receive from government is far larger than cuts faced by almost every other part of the public sector, Bullock added.
