£20m saved in council budget - but 300 jobs go to pay for it

7:53am Tuesday 13th November 2012 in News Photograph of the Author By Matt Smith, Politics and business reporter

Previous cuts sparked union protests Previous cuts sparked union protests

THREE hundred jobs will be axed and services slashed in Southampton’s deepest ever council budget cuts.

Labour leaders last night confirmed plans for record job losses, cuts to services and hikes in charges that will slash £20m from the council’s budget next year – with the prospect of even more pain in coming years.

Labour and the unions have blamed Government funding cuts and Conservative economic policies for the dire state of the council’s finances.

But the leader of the last Tory administration to run the city council claimed the current council chiefs were responsible for a “disaster” which had betrayed staff who trusted them to protect their jobs and pay.

Children’s services will be hardest hit with £6m of cuts and 126 job losses planned.

The council’s residential children’s unit for traumatised eight to 12-year-olds, Our House, will close.

The council’s youth service, which aims to create opportunities for 11 to 25-year-olds, will be axed with 30 job losses.

The budget for the city’s Sure Start children’s centres will also be cut by £1m a year.

Labour bosses, who pledged to do all they could to stop job losses and avoid compulsory redundancies, are proposing to axe 279 full-time equivalent posts – the council’s largest ever jobs cull. It is thought that 327 of the council’s 4,000 staff are affected.

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Park keepers, street cleaners, librarians, social workers and care managers are also among the casualties.

Cllr Royston Smith, whose Tory group was ousted from power in May, said: “It’s worse than I expected. The word betrayal doesn’t come close to what they have done to people who trusted they would have pay restored and their jobs would be safe. Now we know 327 people are going to lose their jobs.

“Everyone is going to pay more and get less. They could not have managed the budget process worse if they had tried. It’s a disaster.”

Redundancy payments to top £4 million

Who is to blame?

For the the full list of where cuts - click here

Mayor's famous number plate to fetch £100,000?

Comments(18)

Miguel Raton says...
10:40am Tue 13 Nov 12

''Children’s services will be hardest hit with £6m of cuts and 126 job losses planned.''

''Park keepers, street cleaners, librarians, social workers and care managers are also among the casualties.''

Any chance that any higher paid staff have gone or are the cuts hust for the plebs ?

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Rockhopper says...
11:04am Tue 13 Nov 12

Who is to blame?
Well SCC is hugely over-staffed at
supervisor/middle-ma
nager
level.
There are too many faceless staff attempting to justify their existence when a clerical/admin worker could be doing the same job for a lot less money.

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nedscrumpo says...
11:19am Tue 13 Nov 12

Miguel Raton wrote:
''Children’s services will be hardest hit with £6m of cuts and 126 job losses planned.''

''Park keepers, street cleaners, librarians, social workers and care managers are also among the casualties.''

Any chance that any higher paid staff have gone or are the cuts hust for the plebs ?
The answer is no, senior management will be bloating further

Report this post »

sotonlad79 says...
11:59am Tue 13 Nov 12

this is disgusting all these services are vital especially the ones that help kids those services should be top of the list to be protected this country is a joke! useless government.

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CBeck01 says...
12:46pm Tue 13 Nov 12

I would like to know how many Pilgrims (aka Union staff being paid out of the public purse) will be cut? How much money does the council spend on Pilgrims? I am fed up with these people portraying themselves as front line staff, but are in fact 100% working for the Unions, on our money - it is a disgrace!!

I am not surprised this is happening. It suits their national party and Union paymasters agenda, 'not our fault, it's the tories'.

Same old Labour.

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Chas O'Bursledon says...
1:17pm Tue 13 Nov 12

What hypocrisy from the last administration. They leave a financial black hole and then blame the people who were elected to clean it up. The books were obviously in a worse state than could have been imagined. This cannot be blamed on bankers. This is central government vindictiveness. Eric Pickles, hang your head in shame!

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Sotonians_lets_pull_together says...
2:09pm Tue 13 Nov 12

nedscrumpo wrote:
Miguel Raton wrote:
''Children’s services will be hardest hit with £6m of cuts and 126 job losses planned.''

''Park keepers, street cleaners, librarians, social workers and care managers are also among the casualties.''

Any chance that any higher paid staff have gone or are the cuts hust for the plebs ?
The answer is no, senior management will be bloating further
Looks clear that it will be senior jobs going - can be no way they can cut £1m from Sure Start children’s centres by losing 12 jobs unless very senior staff are being lost.

Junior staff do not cost the council £83k a year each !

Heads of Centre could cost around that much I would imagine, once you add in employer's NI, pensions etc...

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Sotonians_lets_pull_together says...
2:11pm Tue 13 Nov 12

CBeck01 wrote:
I would like to know how many Pilgrims (aka Union staff being paid out of the public purse) will be cut? How much money does the council spend on Pilgrims? I am fed up with these people portraying themselves as front line staff, but are in fact 100% working for the Unions, on our money - it is a disgrace!!

I am not surprised this is happening. It suits their national party and Union paymasters agenda, 'not our fault, it's the tories'.

Same old Labour.
Any work for unions on council time should not be paid, unless by the unions themselves.

Report this post »

Sotonians_lets_pull_together says...
2:15pm Tue 13 Nov 12

Why waste £4m on redundancies?

Surely better to keep staff in post, and give everyone a small pay cut, much fairer, preserves services, and keeps as many as possible in a job.

But of course that is exactly what the conservatives were doing.

The unions and labour have let down the people of Southampton, and have let down the employees.

I hope the council workers who didnt bother to vote against the strikes realise now their mistake. They must stand up for themselves, and vote down the militants, whenever they rear their heads, as they do more harm than good.

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fairdinkum says...
5:59pm Tue 13 Nov 12

"The council’s youth service, which aims to create opportunities for 11 to 25-year-olds, will be axed with 30 job losses"

It's all bad news, but the already underfunded provision for teenagers and young people seems particularly likely to store up future trouble

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Plum Pudding says...
8:46pm Tue 13 Nov 12

327 out of 4000, I make that about 8%. And whilst I accept there will be cuts to services, can someone remind me what percentage of staff at Ford, Swaythling have lost their jobs...? Perhaps " horrendous" is just a tad liberal with journalistic licence?

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mr nobody says...
9:54pm Tue 13 Nov 12

What a bunch of heartless and cold blooded people you are Clr Williams and friends , with so many children being hurt and deprived of a save a stably life theses days, you fools go and take away the one bit of save haven they have i do hope your not looking to have a happy Christmas ,Clr William you dont need the money from your wages so why don't you give it towards the children and help save something for them . i know labour were bad but not so bad as hurt children .

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ToryTrevor says...
10:18pm Tue 13 Nov 12

Yet again Labour aims the cuts at those least able.
Children, council workers, not the office staff, but those out on the streets doing their best to keep Southampton streets clean and tidy.
The weekly bin collection goes. Nice. Bigger bins all round then? Not likely.
And the poorest families pay more in council tax. Children hit again for there's no slack in their purse.
Give yourselves a pay rise, dear councillors, and hold your chins high.
And when the family breaks down, where do they go now. Where are the spare Social Workers, the spare placements.
Why not cut foster placement fees while you're at it. There's always the beached and forests for the homeless.
But you'll tax that too!

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mr nobody says...
10:19pm Tue 13 Nov 12

I still want to know why are they hitting children s services before cutting wages of Councillors and the amount of them, thinking of them self's again and their bank balance's you very sad people .

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tootle says...
9:01am Wed 14 Nov 12

Well, just what did you expect. Budgets slashed = services cut. Now Tories had a plan in place, it suited Unions to strike and cause disruption whether it would benefit members or not, workers saw a chance to get pay and jobs back so they went along, Labour didn't have a clue when elected so it's all lets restore pay. now as I read it the Tories wage cuts wouldn't have saved jobs just delayed some of the redundancies. So we have Tories who had a plan(agree with it or not) actively sniping and hindering the Labour Councillors who appear to be bumbling along. Why not everybody grow up, pull together and do some good - in theory we all live in the same city. All Councillors to take a 50% pay rise, then restructure the Council as a non-profit business - maybe employ a few of the people from Fords to advise on how to become more efficient. Childrens services - hmm, as a parent who brought up 2 kids not on benefits and saw opportunities we couldn't afford going to low income families and help not available to us when needed given to families not in as much need just because they were "in the system"(because of low income) and we weren't, help which would make a lot of difference to my now adult son but which we are struggling to access because we weren't passed on from children's services. As somebody else said - throw out the old and modernise, work together efficiently. Outsourcing shouldn't work - if the Council cannot provide the same service for less than a company making a profit then there is something very rotten in the council system(countrywide).

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Lone Ranger. says...
9:17am Wed 14 Nov 12

mr nobody wrote:
I still want to know why are they hitting children s services before cutting wages of Councillors and the amount of them, thinking of them self's again and their bank balance's you very sad people .
So you think that your darling Tories would have been better for childrens services.
.
Well here is the list of the TORY PROPOSED CUTS in CHILDRENS SERVICES:-
.
Children's services.

Reduce subsidy to city catering because take-up of healthy school meals not as bad as thought, £100,000
.
Better use of local authority grant to fund education support services, £450,000
.
Restructure policy and planning team, £55,000, 1 job
.
Reduce community subsidy to schools for extra-curricular activities, £100,000
.
Merge community learning services and encourage charities to take on neighbourhood learning centres, £38,000, 1 job
.
Efficiency savings from Connexions service for young people coming in-house, £100,000
.
Withdraw council social inclusion grant from schools which helps poorer pupils, £580,000
.
Cut management, leadership and governance advice and support to schools, £30,000, 1 job, 1 post
.
Efficiency saving from management and admin costs across children and family services, £57,000, 1 part-time job
.
Close residential home that deals with youths with behavioural problems, £300,000, 14 jobs, 4 posts
.
Trim funding of music service which could result in higher fees, £40,000
Restructure IT support for education, £38,000, 1 job, 1 post
.
Speed up city-wide schools reviews, £51,000, 1 job
.
Merge management of the early years and childcare team, £151,000, 1 job
.
Cut payments to city college for social inclusion work, £49,000
.
Scrap community language service for ethnic minority communities, £84,000, 3 jobs
.
Reduce funding children's play schemes after getting external funding, £287,000, 12.5 jobs
.
Reduce staffing of special educational needs team, £15,000, 1part-time job
.
Reduce council services to tackle badly behaved pupils, £50,000, 1 job
Cut senior management and admin staff in learning services, £58,000, 3 jobs
.
Merge family centres into Sure Start children's centres, £175,000, 7.5 jobs, 3 posts
.
Hows that suit you then ...... wonder if you are happier now

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boilerman says...
10:29am Wed 14 Nov 12

I was recently talking to some council workers who I used to work with and couldn't believe that they get 45 days holiday a year.
I know this is probably not the way to work it out but if all 4000 employees lost 15 days leave, if you multiply this out it works out that the council employee approximately 290 extra staff to cover the annual leave.
So if 300 staff are going to lose their jobs it evens it out.

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Ben Durutti says...
1:04pm Wed 14 Nov 12

Sotonians_lets_pull_
together wrote:
Why waste £4m on redundancies? Surely better to keep staff in post, and give everyone a small pay cut, much fairer, preserves services, and keeps as many as possible in a job. But of course that is exactly what the conservatives were doing. The unions and labour have let down the people of Southampton, and have let down the employees. I hope the council workers who didnt bother to vote against the strikes realise now their mistake. They must stand up for themselves, and vote down the militants, whenever they rear their heads, as they do more harm than good.
Would you trust Royston to run things though? He was driving around without a seatbelt on & no insurance! What would have happened if he had seriously injured (or worse) a child?

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