Southampton City Council leader Royston Smith offers advice to jobs threat staff

Councillor Royston Smith named the American cash and carry giant alongside a new Premier Inn hotel at West Quay when asked where the private sector would pick up hundreds of council job losses.

Costso is planning to create 250 jobs by building one of its discount warehouses on part of the BAT site in Millbrook.

Tory council leaders revealed last week that all 4,180 non-teaching staff face a 5.4 per cent pay cut through reduced hours and up to 250 jobs will go next year to help balance a £62m budget black hole over four years. The council says 400 more jobs would have to go without the pay cuts.

Cllr Smith said new jobs would be created at the council’s Sea City Museum, the Watermark West Quay hotel, cinema and retail development, the conference and community centre at Eastpoint, and from the arrival of Hovercraft maker Griffon Hoverworks in Woolston. He said other development schemes were in the pipeline.

Cllr Smith said: “There is a lot of good news here. They will all bring more jobs; new jobs, different jobs.”

He said he wanted to see jobs created across a range of sectors. About a third of the jobs in the city are currently in the public sector.

The council’s Unison branch secretary Mike Tucker said there had been no discussion about alternative private sector jobs. “The council workers whose jobs are under threat are a wide range of professional staff that provide a wide range of skilled jobs to the community from public health experts to people that work with the elderly.”

Labour councillors urged Cllr Smith to cut the council’s top executives from seven to three to save £792,000 a year and said there would be no protection for senior managers at the cost of frontline workers in a Labour-led council.

The Tories already propose cutting senior management by a quarter.

HAVE YOUR SAY ON CUTS

THE leader of Southampton City Council will today face the public over looming cutbacks in the first a series of road shows.

Councillor Royston Smith will arrive in Shirley this morning with an interactive trailer to talk directly with residents about their priorities for the coming year.

The "Your City, Your Say" events, dubbed Royston's Roadshow, will allow residents to drop in and talk directly about the council budget and share their ideas for cuts or slicker ways of working.

An interactive online budget calculator will allow residents to try their hand at setting the council's budget and make decisions about where money should be spent.

Cllr Smith said: "It's crucial that residents don't feel like this is something that is being 'done to them' but rather that it is something that they can influence and get involved with - we really are all in this together."

Unions last night branded the road shows "window dressing". A questionnaire was recently sent out to a random sample of 3,500 households asking for residents views.

• Anyone unable to attend a road show can email comments to yourcity.yoursay@southampton.gov.uk.