Graphic: council cuts

At least 40,000 council jobs are expected to be lost this year, with two thirds of local authorities admitting that they are cutting posts to cope with the recession.

A survey of 106 town halls conducted by The Times this week shows that 65 councils are planning to cut 12,144 jobs to cope with a tight financial settlement and a sharp drop in revenue. Extrapolated across the 442 councils in Britain, this would amount to more than 40,000 losses.

Councils say they face a “perfect storm” of declining revenues and increasing demand for services at a time when they are under pressure to keep council tax rises to a minimum. Jobs are going across the board, from management to frontline departments.

At Newcastle City Council, 270 of the 500 jobs to be lost this year will be in management, while Aberdeen City Council has announced that primary school assistants will be hit hardest by the 385 redundancies in the authority.

Thurrock Council in Essex is closing a children’s home, Pebbles, which will save more than £500,000 but has cost 18 jobs and left three children needing to be rehomed in other facilities or in foster care.

The job cuts are being announced as councils finalise their budgets and council tax bills for 2009-10. So far 75 per cent of authorities have said that they are revising their budgets because of the recession.

Latest estimates suggest that council tax bills will rise by at least 3 per cent in April, 30 times the current level of retail price inflation, which stands at 0.1 per cent.

A separate survey of 129 council leaders by the Local Government Association shows that half have made job cuts and seven in ten expect to make further redundancies.

A regional breakdown shows that 67 per cent of town halls in the South West have cut jobs, as have 58 per cent of those in the West Midlands. The smallest job losses have been in the East of England (33 per cent).

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council, which is planning to cut 500 posts, said: “It has been described as a perfect storm of the credit crunch and the recession at the same time. There is pressure on local authorities to find new efficiencies.”

Richard Brett, joint leader of Leeds City Council, which is cutting 650 posts, said: “We are having to make some incredibly difficult decisions, and are having to face up to the prospect of reducing our staff numbers.”

Most councils will reduce staff numbers by not filling vacancies before imposing redundancies. Hundreds of jobs will also be lost through local government reorganisation, as a number of district and unitary councils are absorbed into county councils.

Nottingham County Council, where 350 jobs are being lost, said that the credit crunch had hit hard. “This has been done against a background of recession, which has had an impact on the city council just as it has on other councils, businesses and families,” a spokesman said.

At Westminster Council, in Central London, more than 10 per cent of the workforce is to be cut with up to 400 job losses, including 100 management posts, to save £30 million over three years.

Melvyn Caplan, cabinet member for finance, said: “Every council is in a situation where income is falling and expenditure is increasing. Government grants are going downwards, income for councils are going downwards, even interest rates are bad for us because our balances are reduced.”

Hammersmith and Fulham Council, in West London, is to cut its council tax by 3 per cent from April, but to pay for the decrease it is implementing a range of cost-cutting measures, including 46 redundancies, mostly voluntary, in the next six months.

Margaret Eaton, chairman of the Local Government Association, said: “Just as the private sector is having to cut back during tough times, so too councils are faced with incredibly tough decisions.”

John Healey, the Local Government Minister, said: “I don’t want to see councils simply cutting jobs as the easy option for cutting costs. In the current economic climate, such decisions cannot be taken lightly, but ultimately councils must put their residents first.”

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