Found out through my grapevine that there are to be 18 compulsory redundancies in the Adult Services Directorate. Not big chiefs, but people generally in relatively lowly jobs. They include the Welfare Rights team - which has saved the Council vast amounts of money over the last 7 or 8 years by ensuring service users get their full social security benefit entitlement - and Team Clerks, who do the admin. for trained social workers.
So now we know where the 'efficiencies' are coming from. How dishonest the Council's budget was, as we always suspected. Much of this is not about backroom jobs, but jobs that save the Council money or support professionals in the field. Just like staff employed to support Cabinet members....
The expected cull has begun. And only last week in the media the Tories were still denying significant job losses as a result of their budget. Well 18 may not be significant to the Tories, but it is significant to those people, their families and their friends - and the Welfare Rights service will be a loss to the Council's revenues.
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That's only the tip of it. I work in a big department, where we've lost two long-serving junior officers through what is best called 'compulsory retirement'. This doesn’t show up as redundancy, see. Plus every time somebody gets another job elsewhere (and we'll all looking for them) we're not allowed to replace them. So out of about 50 of us I guess that perhaps 8 posts have essentially been made 'redundant' since the last election. None show up on the official figures. And does this impact upon the service we provide to vulnerable members of our community? You bet!
Well done Geoff on getting some good publicity for these scandalous lay-offs. I don't suppose that the Conservatives will be horrified enough to rethink, but hey, it's a bit of entertainment to see them squirm.
Now what about the other officers who are 'at risk' - we read of four in the County Press last year, Garath Davies, Matthew Chatfield, John Murphy and Adrian Niemic. Now Mr Murphy - winner of the Council's top team award in 2005 - has mysteriously and suddenly retired, are all the other three still at risk?
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