Jobs News

Jobs cut to save Wokingham council £9.5m

By Victoria Corbett
February 17, 2010

A cost-cutting exercise to balance Wokingham Borough Council’s books will see 150 redundancies as part of plans to save £9.5 million and offer a council tax increase of 1.9 per cent.

The council’s Transformation Programme – which aims to plug a £6 million funding gap by 2012/13 – also includes looking at outsourcing some services and sharing certain functions with neighbouring boroughs like Reading and Bracknell.

Council tax to increase by 1.9%

The ambitious project will cost more than £5 million to implement and Susan Law, chief executive at the council, explained this would be spent on new IT systems and technology. She said this would enable staff to access systems remotely and for processes to be shared.

Projected savings from the programme will be £950,000 in the next financial year, £2.6 million in 2011/12 and £6.1 million in 2012/13.

At a briefing on Thursday, Ms Law said the council had not yet decided which departments the redundancies would come from.

However, a closer look at the budget papers says staff reductions in democratic services will save nearly £60,000 over the next three years and in legal services will save around £290,000. There are also savings of £127,000 a year planned for the chief executive's office by making “efficiencies” to the overall range of communications services.

The council has around 1,400 employees, and around 45 per cent of these are members of Unison.

Paul Bee, Unison’s branch secretary in Wokingham, said: “Unison is not happy with yet another restructuring, cost-cutting exercise, which we assume is to maintain a low council tax. Morale in the council is below zero.”

The council will debate the budget at a meeting tomorrow at Shute End from 7.30pm.

For in-depth analysis of the budget see this week’s Wokingham Times

| Submit Comments | View Comments (6)

« Previous Story | Next Story »

Most recent user comments 6 of 6

Show 15 | 25 | 50 per page

Sharing functions with Reading and Bracknell? Now there's an idea. Hang on. Didn't we used to do that? I think it was called 'Berkshire County Council' but that was abolished and now we are having to pay the price. Unitary authorities may be the future but in our case we got rid of the wrong tier of local government. We should have kept just one, Berkshire, and done away with the six we have been left with. The economies of scale that would accrue would see council taxes fall significantly.

LarryS
22/02/2010 at 15:27

Re George's comments about snow/ ice clearance: I live in Reading and my bike ride to work takes me into Wokingham. The roads in Wokingham were far better than those in Reading during the snow. I had to get off and push the bike within Reading one day, but was able to get on and cycle without problem as soon as I got to the borough boundary at the 3 Tuns - so well done Wokingham!

Zippedy Doo Daa, Reading
17/02/2010 at 19:36

I'm fed up of MPs and councillors bashing each other. Can't you do something constructive instead?

If the restructuring works properly it could improve processes, improve information sharing, and therefore improve efficiency in the council and save huge amounts of money. I'm not sure outsourcing is a good idea but it's clear some of the council's processes aren't working well enough as one department will have no clue what another is doing and no access to information about people they're dealing with.

CMA
17/02/2010 at 12:55

George can you find ONE road in the borough that hasn't been resurfaced for 100 years?

Snuffles
17/02/2010 at 12:26

The jobs that should be cut are the Quangos and psuedo jobs not ones that affect the front line. In terms of a Labour PPC(?) having a go at the conservatives about Finances!! Who is in power? Are we in a state or recession? The word hypocrite comes to mind. Expenses anyone?

Lardy Da
17/02/2010 at 11:53

They've bungled the council's finances and now will not just have to put up local taxes but cut services and what angers me is that decisions like that affect the most vulnerable like retired people with savings who will pay the price, school kids using local libraries, local schools will not be rebuilt, old people's homes will be hit. This politics affects everyone... and the people of Berkshire should be disgusted, they've been let down by the Conservatives. We have one of the highest average council taxes in Berkshire and some of the worst services.... - Safeguarding childrens services amongst the 7 worst in the country along with councils like Haringey - Just 7 miles of the 700 in the borough resurfaced each year - meaning roads have to last 100 years - Snow and ice clearing efforts that even the Tory MP described as "pathetic" - Council housing stock criticised by national housing charity Shelter

They urgently need to sort this out.