Highland Council could shed hundreds of jobs as it targets savings of £15m
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Dire warnings about the depth of the financial crisis faced by the Highland Council are to be renewed tomorrow when members are told the local authority is looking to shed 500 staff next year to save £15 million.
The local authority warns “services in their current format cannot be sustained – some will need to be removed and the scope of others significantly reduced".
The council is grappling with an £8.9 million black hole this year but it is facing a massive overspend next year of just under £41 million so it is looking at “workforce planning and preparation”.
Terminology seems to have changed since the full council meeting in September when the “no redundancy” policy was still in force but that has now changed to “no redundancy where possible.”
Reducing staff will be done through vacancy management, which basically means not hiring new staff when someone leaves or retires, and this will be done by “upskilling” those employees who remain.
Currently the council has 10,568 staff – its highest level since 2018 – and pay is a major issue with recent pay awards unfunded by government for this year totalling £5 million while next year pay is expected to increase by £15.9 million.
The worst affected services are education and learning with savings of £8.6 million, property & housing and health and wellbeing & social care must both save £1.5 million, while communities & place and performance & governance both must save just over £1 million.
Ed Foster, the head of finance, said: “The challenge facing the council, and indeed every local authority in Scotland, will require a wholesale change in the services and service levels the council provides.
“The council continues to project a £40.9m budget gap for financial year 2023/24, larger than any experienced before. Furthermore, concerns are increasing that this figure may underplay the true level of challenge ahead.
“Inflationary pressures across both pay and non-pay cost categories are acute and the impact of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement on the council’s funding settlement for 2023/24 will not be known until officers have had the opportunity to analyse the Scottish Government’s budget statement which will be published on 15 December."
The council, he said, plans to deal with that through “two key methods of financial control" that are "stringent recruitment controls" and that all spending must be "essential" to ensure "the council operates safely and meets the minimum statutory requirement for service provision".
He added: “The delivery of such a level of savings will link into the council’s people strategy by managing staff vacancies to minimise external appointments.
“This will be done through supporting staff development; job redesign; the agility and flexibility of our workforce to meet changing business needs; and the continued commitment from the Council of ‘no redundancies where possible’.”
There is a full meeting of Highland Council this Thursday.
