Cornwall Council has published a statement which sets out
the implications of the extra budgets voted through by the Liberal Democrats
and their Conservative allies. It is all very disturbing and there will be both
job cuts and a reduction in service provision.
Shown below are extracts from the statement, which explains
where the cuts may fall:
Following the decision by the full Council to freeze the
authority’s element of council tax, details of how the additional £4.672m
savings will be delivered over the next twelve months will be reported to an
extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet on Monday, 18 March.
The budget agreed by Members at the meeting of the full
Council on 26 February is predicated on a reduction of £3.672m on spending on
agency staff, with an additional £400,000 reduction in the budget of the
Strategy, Localism and Communications Service and an additional £600,000 increased
target for council tax collection. However, as was made clear in the
Section 151 officer’s comments at the meeting, it is not possible to reduce
agency staff costs in the way that was envisaged by the original motion.
Following the budget setting meeting on 26 February
individual directorates were allocated specific savings targets in line with
the Council decision. The report sets out how these will be delivered and the
resulting impact on services.
Adult Care and Support (£840,000 savings)
The directorate currently employs agency staff to cover
staff sickness and leave in day centres and respite centres where a minimum
level of staff is legally required, to cover key posts such as social workers
where there have been recruitment delays and to provide flexibility when
reshaping services to avoid the cost of redundancies.
The savings will be delivered by reducing the numbers of
agency staff. In some cases agency posts will be replaced by recruiting
staff onto council contracts at lower rates. Some posts will not be
replaced and this may lead to short notice temporary closure of services such
as day centres which rely on the flexibility of agency staff to cover
sickness.
Children, Schools and Families (£906,000 savings)
The directorate uses agency staff particularly within
Children’s Social Work and children’s centres. These include social
workers, administrators, play workers, crèche assistances, interpreters, case
co-ordinators and drivers. There is already a system in place to
train and develop social workers locally through the Council’s social work
foundation so that as people graduate from that the Council can then use them
to replace higher paid agency social workers.
The savings will be delivered by reviewing and reducing
agency staff, extending recruitment times for vacancies and potentially making
emergency savings through cuts to front line services, including early help and
preventative services.
Shared Services (£358,000 savings)
This service includes face to face services such as
libraries, one stop shops, mobile services and the telephone contact
centre.
Face to Face services use agency staff to cover staff
sickness, leave and training - without this these services would not be able to
remain open at all times due to minimum staffing levels. The contact centre
only uses agency staff to cover increased demand due to specific short term
events and these are funded by the service (s) concerned, not the contact
centre.
£80,000 of the savings requirement will be delivered by
enhanced savings through the Strategic Partnership. Approximately 60% of the
remaining £278,000 will be delivered by reducing the operating and opening
times of libraries and one stop shops and reducing the opening hours of the
contact centre as quickly as possible. Alongside these changes, in
order to deliver the full savings requirement, there will also need to be a
wider review of libraries, one stop shops and mobile services for consideration
by the new Council.
Environment (£387,000 savings)
The Directorate deliberately uses agency staff to provide
flexibility during re organisation and to deliver important capital projects
such as new roads.
The reduction in the number of staff will lead to delays in
processing requests and applications for waste and parking services; a reduced
ability to influence and deliver major highways and rail improvement schemes,
and potential impact on English Heritage funded archaeological projects.
Chief Executive’s (£674,000 savings)
Although the directorate does not employ significant numbers
of agency staff it has been allocated a savings target of £274,000 to cover the
cost of support staff used to develop the Strategic Partnership. It also
has to deliver the £400,000 agreed in the budget.
£166,000 of these savings will be delivered by the People
and Organisational Development service through a restructuring of two teams,
resulting in the loss of four posts and a reduction in the council’s capacity
to support organisational change.
The remaining £510,000 will come from the Strategy, Localism
and Communications service. This will be met by deleting 14 posts and
stopping some specific activities, including the Council presence at the Royal
Cornwall Show, the production of the staff magazine and reducing the spending
on webcasting.
Legal, Democratic and Procurement service (£122,000 savings)
The service uses a small number of agency staff as necessary
to provide temporary cover pending permanent appointments and cope with
additional workloads and sickness and maternity cover.
The savings will be delivered by deleting four posts across
the service and reducing the overtime budget for Elections.
Information Services (£488,000 savings)
The service uses agency staff to bring in specific expertise
when the authority does not have the skills or knowledge in house and to fill
gaps when permanent staff are hard to recruit.
£400,000 of the savings will be delivered through enhanced
savings through the Strategic Partnership, with the remaining savings coming
from the renegotiation of contracts.
Finance (£320,000 savings)
While the service has used a number of agency and interim
staff over the past few months while carrying out a comprehensive redesign of
the service to deliver £650,000 savings and to support the implementation of
the Strategic partnership and ERP projects, these projects are now at an end,
with the majority of these agency staff due to leave the authority by the end
of April. This means that the savings will have to be made by reducing
the number of permanent staff by around 12 posts.
As the service has a number of statutory duties, including
budgetary and financial control and the financial closure of accounts the savings
cannot be made in these areas. This means the cuts will have to be made
in Financial Strategy and Business Partnership team, which provides financial
advice to directorates for major service change, and in Internal Audit and Risk
Management. This will result in the provision of minimum statutory cover
and the loss of preventative work in fraud and audit, which, in the long term,
will cost money and may impact on the Council’s value for money assessment made
by the External Auditor.
While the authority’s overall budget is set by Full Council,
it is the responsibility of the Corporate Directors to decide how to implement
the savings targets allocated to their specific areas.
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