Southampton City Council to axe 150 jobs - and more cuts to come

A total of 145 management jobs axed as well as a handful of posts on the Itchen Bridge will go as part of £8.6million savings.

Yet the council's Labour finance chief says more jobs will be lost in the future as the council becomes "a smaller organisation", leading to fears it will be overstretched in the future.

As reported, the savings approved at full council this evening are the final instalment of the budget for 2016/17, which have already seen 270 jobs scrapped when cutbacks in the housing department were also included.

Labour say they are still having to deal with crippling cuts in their funding from central Government, and they estimate they will still need to find another £42.3million by 2020.

The review of managers at the council will save £2.5million in 2016/17 plus £3million for the next three years. That could mean the loss of 145 jobs, of which 24 posts are already vacant.

It is part of a major ongoing review in which more services, such as parking permits, are provided online therefore requiring less staff, which will be continued in future years.

Finance chief Cllr Mark Chaloner said there are no firm numbers yet for the number of admin jobs that could be lost in future years, but confirmed that more posts will be lost.

"We will do our best to ensure our staff eligible for redundancy can be redeployed, but you can't take millions from the budget without it affecting staff numbers, as a significant amount of our outgoing is staff", he said.

Cllr Mark Chaloner was unable to confirm how many administrative jobs would be lost in future

"We will become a smaller organisation and therefore we will employ less staff."

But there are fears from opposition councillors that the cuts to management will leave the council stretched, with Conservative group leader Cllr Jeremy Moulton saying: "The council has to get the basics right, like cleaning the streets and supporting the elderly and vulnerable children.

"But the grass is not being cut, satisfaction in the council has gone down in the last 12 months.

"I think the plans are do-able, it will be a significant challenge but if the council is going to have less management it has to have less activities."

He pointed to a council report saying just 43 per cent of residents believed the council offered value for money compared to 44 per cent in the last survey, while 55 per cent were satisfied with how the council runs services, compared to 59 per cent in the last survey.

Cllr Keith Morrell, below, leader of the Councillors Against the Cuts group, said: "My fear is that this is a hollowing out of the city council to an extent that it not only puts pressure on the day to day operation of the council, but makes us vulnerable in the future in the event of staff leaving or extra demands being made."

The 2016/17 budget at a glance

A total of £21m of savings were approved for the 2016/17 budget earlier this year.

Council tax has risen by 1.99 per cent, although plans for a four per cent increase were scrapped.

And more than 270 jobs were lost in the budget and housing budget, on top of the 145 lost in the latest proposals.

As well as the review of management, the new measures include changes to shift patterns at Itchen Bridge, where three jobs would go, and the introduction of parking restrictions around the Royal South Hants Hospital.

And another plan set for approval is the creation of a property investment fund, which would allow the council to borrow money to buy stakes in developments and receive rental income.

In the housing budget, the council said £1.4m of savings a year are coming from more work being done in-house as opposed to through sub-contractors, and £700,000 from reducing the number of managers.