Dorset cuts crisis: Full Q&A with David Clarke

DC: In my experience from working in local government these were the toughest cuts in 30-40 years so for the two councils west faced a 25 per cent reduction in its grants over 2 years and Weymouth faced the worst in the country. With 28 per cent. That was really significant and was certainly worse than we anticipated.

MP: Going back to the day when you found out it would be 28 per cent for Weymouth was that a stressful day for you?

DC: No because the plans that were put in place two years previously which was the foresight of both councils forging a partnership based on its experience of the revenues partnership we had been running for three years beforehand.

MP: Merging services, was that first suggested then?

DC: We knew something like this was coming, the economic climate across the world and the country was suggesting that.

MP: So that was started 18 months before last October DC: We thought we were expecting something like 7-8 per cent cuts for the next four years, so that’s the kind of ambition of the partnership was to try and offset that and the whole purpose of the partnership is to reduce costs and the efficiencies in the way we work to keep frontline services. So far that’s been very successful in both councils. The partnership aims to save between the both councils £2.5million a year.

MP: It was £2million before DC: It’s roughly £2million for the main convergence of the staffing partnership. In addition we have about 300,000 in terms of the revenues and £200,000 in terms of waste partnership. So all of that together is the £2.5million, the £2million is the rest of the organisation.

MP: When you first merged in oct and said that the figures saved by the merger of services would be £8.5million, are you still on track to achieve that?

DC: Just to give you an example, the target we chose if you talk about the main partnership, we’ve already achieved £1.1million since the first phase took place in October. We reported back to our joint committee which is members for both councils so we’re well on target in terms of where we are. In terms of the structure we’ve now appointed third and fourth tier officers. So we put in place one chief executive instead of two, there’s four directors instead of nine which is the second tier and the third tier is 16 service managers instead of 30 and those are now in place. We have to still appoint a couple but around 48 officers have now been appointed.

MP: How much has that reduced your officer levels by?

DC:That makes up the majority of the £1.1million in savings so people have been made redundant and so on through that process.

MP: So if the 16 came from 30, how many have the officer numbers decreased by?

DC: It’s difficult to say because some of the 48 were in this selection. I can say that there have been reductions at every level. Why i can’t be too precise is that we’ve only just made those so we’ve got people still at risk.

MP: So are you now onto phase 3?

DC: yes what we’re doing now is going to the whole rest of the divisions in phases, we’re about to start the four divisions to complete the rest – these are HR, IT, development services, legal and democratic services. We are aiming to finish it all by April 2012.

MP: When you first started this process did you think it was optimistic that this would end befire April 2012?

DC: Well yes but we are on track, the main message we’re getting because we’ve all been through it is that the process is creating anxiety for the staff who don’t know where they are. It’s the uncertainty, we’re balancing having a fair process of selection and placement with the need to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Now that process we’re going to halve so we’re agreeing with the unions that it used to take a whole 12 weeks for consultation, now we’ll have two processes. Now we’re getting into the depth of the processes most people will be placed. Where there’s no competition we’re going to fast track them over a period of two weeks once we’ve agreed the structure. Where there is competition because of the appropriate need to be fair, its still going to take 6-7 weeks. Not only are we agreeing this process for placement of existing staff for both authorities, but the unions have been terrific in assisting us with the other changes we are bringing about with terms and conditions. We’ve just carried out a staff survey and most of the staff are anxious, morale is a bit low but they do understand why we’re doing the partnership. They understand that this will protect front line services but is not easy until you know where you are and that’s why we must keep on track.. The directors and managers and the HR team particularly are trying to make this as quick and fair as possible. That’s why it’s till back on track to finish by April next year. So we’ll have gone through the placement of 800 staff plus so its not easy and all of those staff. I have a series of staff meetings now and again and the biggest message is to say thank you to them. The staff have put up with all these changes, they know there’s a reduction in grant and services but we are actually reducing the affect of that in direct services and they are going through the biggest change in the history of both authorities yet they are maintaining services, so it’s a big thank-you to them.

MP: Is there any examples of where merging the two authorities services just hasn’t worked?

DC: Yes some are obvious, some planned, for instance we’ve needed for this transitional period an increase in HR staff because they are dealing with a massive process. With part of the costs of the transition it includes these costs. I can’t say we’ve yet come across unplanned issues. Everyone is busy but on top of that, not only are we striving to keep all of the services going – around about 60 or 70 so that the public don’t notice, we’re going through the biggest change we’ve ever done and thirdly we’ve got the Olympics. More and more, even though there is a core team devoted to making those a great success we’re now engaging lots and lots of the mainstream staff in supporting that process.

MP: What is the official name for the partnership?

DC: What’s important is the two councils are continuing at the point of service, if you are a resident or business in Weymouth or Portland you will know the council is Weymouth and if it’s West Dorset it’s West Dorset. It’s just the staffing structure that’s different. Internally we call it the staffing structure. All that means is that it is a converged staffing structure serving two councils, but outwardly we dropped the name Westwey because it’s going to confuse the public, when they get their bill or tax bill they know who it is from. We hope people don’t notice, they see services from Weymouth or West Dorset and what they will see is that those services are continuing from the two councils. MP: have complaints gone up since it happened?

DC: No that’s stable, we do have eruptions of certain types of comments. That can be to do with the Olympic traffic management system which you can expect, or a major planning application and so on. That’s why we’re striving with this, five years ago we started when Tom Grainger was the chief here, it started with the benefits partnership, so all the business rates, all the council tax. That’s how is started. We brought the staff together and not only did we do it cheaper but we actually improved the services. So benefit turnaround and new claims, they started to hit top quartile so we did everything we could that said we will change the way you work, become very paperless in terms of dealing with processes and became more efficient, we changed the offices they worked in and they still provided a better service. That ‘s saved cash. They celebrated last year reaching a million pounds on their own with just 80 or so people. That’s now so successful that Purbeck District Council have joined us and that is progressing into a further partnership, and that gave the members of both councils a real insight into this not just being theory but could this work. It’s now saving £200,000 a year less than it did before and we’re very very proud of that. That came in five years ago now, that started gradually, it was the thing we should be doing. It was not easy, staff had to work with different It systems, different methods of working, totally changed how they work and got through all that. There were stress points but I’m so proud of the staff that got through that, it has shown us the way. We talk about path finders but for Weymouth and Portland and West Dorset that was real pathfinder project that proved so successful it’s lead to doing it across every service.

MP: When tough decisions have had to be made on the back of the Government’s Spending review last year. Did you feel that people in Dorset blamed you for spending cuts when really it wasn’t your fault?

DC: I think both councils have responded very very well so far because that partnership has enabled them to make drastic reductions. If I talk about West Dorset, the council’s still maintaining all the services they did before including important grants to voluntary organisations ti sports, culture, theatres and so on. They’ve managed to maintain those despite these major reductions. Now, it is going to get worse, we’re about to receive more bad news, we roughly knew that the 28 per cents was the next two years, but we’ll start to find out further reductions beyond that and the anticipation is that there might be further reductions of 7-8 per cent again each year, on top of the 28 per cent. That will be across all councils. We will get insight when they confirm reductions in November, December time. The real knowledge of what will happen in the years after is in 2012 in nov/Dec.