Dudley Council is expecting to spend £8.6m on payouts as it cuts staffing levels in the next financial year. The council is planning to save an eye-watering £42m in a bid to deliver balanced budgets for the next five years and among cuts is a wide-ranging cull of staff.
Senior officers are in the firing line with plans in place to reduce the number of top earners from 61 to 32. It is understood several high-ranking officials have already left the authority or are in the process of negotiating their departure. The transformation scheme is expected to save £1.2m per year but the authority is budgeting to spend £3m on exit payments while further payments to staff leaving the council are predicted to reach £5.6m.
The figures are revealed in the council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) which will be voted on by the full council on February 24. The draft document, published ahead of a series of scrutiny meetings starting on January 20, outlines a raft of planned savings which are already causing concern among councillors.
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A plan to reduce the operation of the Welfare Rights Team, which provides information and advocacy for members of the public, to statutory services only is forecast to save £300,000 per year. An open letter signed by concerned campaigners including Liberal Democrat and independent members of the authority, Dudley Trades Union Council and Dudley Crossroads, is calling on Dudley’s cabinet member for finance, Cllr Steve Clark, to rethink.
The document said: “While we understand the need to deliver a balanced budget, we write to you to express our concern that this should not be done at the expense of the most vulnerable in our borough. “Access to quality welfare advice is needed by our residents more than ever.”
The council’s budget document lists around 157 savings, including deleting more than 200 vacancies to save £9.6m, and cutting the agency budget, which will reduce costs by £460,000. The council’s HR and public relations teams are also in the spotlight with savings of £543,000 planned while the parks development fund will be reviewed to cut £300,00 from spending.
Despite the unprecedented scale of the savings, Dudley Council leader, Cllr Patrick Harley, believes changes have to happen. He said: “The vast majority of pain is going to be felt by the directorates and the number of staff we employ, we will have to be a leaner, more efficient authority.
“The flavour of the day seems to be politics and local government needs to be cheaper and more efficient and that’s what we have set out to do by trimming our workforce and making directors really look at what they are spending. “Spending controls will not end, we will continue to keep a firm grip on finances, I think Dudley can be possibly a test case for other authorities to look at to see how we have done it to balance the books for five years.
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“We have gone through that budget painstakingly, identified where departments are double counting and providing the same service – they are just not talking to each other.”