A MAJOR shake-up of Warrington Borough Council’s senior management structure will save the authority about £450,000-a-year.
Five heads of service posts will disappear – but there will be one additional post of health and social care director, jointly funded by the council and NHS Warrington, if the senior management review is approved by the full council tonight (Monday).
Transitional costs of redundancy or retirement costs will be recovered over a period of
two years.
Four strategic director posts will be replaced by three executive directors and an assistant chief executive.
Chief executive Diana Terris will not be affected by the changes.
Originally it was intended to axe six heads of service posts, but following consultation with directors and heads of service it was decided to reinstate one head of service within the Children’s Services directorate.
A report to tonight’s council meeting states: “The strength of feeling and the weight of the feedback concerning the potential and perceived impact that the reduction in posts could have had on the deliver of effective Children’s Services in the borough were convincing of the need to retain this post.
“Furthermore, the recent publication of the Laming report into the safeguarding of young children will require further reflection on the findings and impact of this work. For these reasons, the structure for the directorate at the Head of Service level should remain unchanged.”
But for this change, and others affecting Trading Standards, food hygiene and Health and Safety, the annual savings would have been about £550,000.
A further review is to be made of third and fourth tier posts at the council to be implemented in April next year.
6 Comments
Whilst it is good that savings are being made, and I can think of other areas where this should happen, I hope that it doesn’t mean a reduction in the standards and actions needed to improve the status quo.
Hhhhmmm, so what are they going to spend their savings on??? And how come WBC employees STILL don't know the out come of an over two year job evaluation that we were promised would be implemented 1/4/09 ?
That’s madness, how are they all coping, how come WBC are promoting the fact that they are saving money when their employees dont know what their wages are going to be? Amazing!
It is becoming very clear that there is a "brain drain" from the town hall – which is pretty common practice when any organisations is looking to make substantial savings.
People with "brains" don't stay where there is no money and no leadership in post to ensure a bright future.
I work for the Council and I am very sad to see Helen Sumner leaving, tomorrow being her last day, she will be greatly missed.
Although I don’t plan to cut my nose off to spite my face I am certainly working towards leaving for pastures new.
Employee’s are very aware of what is hapening, far more than given credit, many have worked for other organisations and seen it all before, they know whats being done to them.
All stand on a carpet and keep shaking it and people will wobble, fall off even and slowly but surely there are less and less people standing on the carpet until you have the least with which you can (just about) manage – the problem is you can’t really pick who falls off the carpet – and what if you’ve staff on that carpet who are only staying on it because they’ve paid into a pension for years and so wont leave come what may if they don’t have to but are the type of staff who are not what the newly branded council want as part of their team and don’t sign up to the vision and its aims objectives and are not comitted, a laibility even, and what if the staff who have been loyal and worked hard and contributed positively feel enoughs enough and go else where???