Council is planning to cutback 200 jobs

The local authority is offering staff the chance to take voluntary severance or voluntary early retirement to help it balance its books.

The offer has been made to eligible staff across all services, including centrally employed teachers, as the local authority aims to make savings of £40 million by 2016/17.

Calderdale Council’s cabinet member for use of resources, Councillor Geraldine Carter, said: “The council faces some significant financial challenges over the next few years. We have developed these two voluntary schemes, which for the first time we are making available to the majority of staff.

“During this period of change we also want to minimise the need for redundancies and make best use of the many strengths in our workforce. This means we will be supporting movement within the council through our Future Workforce Programme, which is helping us to retain talent, but at the same time meet our saving requirements by removing 200 posts by 2016. We’re expecting the programme to provide a £600,000 saving in 2015/16 and £5.5m from 2016/17.”

It is hoped that compulsory redundancies can be kept to a minimum.

Letters with details of the relevant schemes are being sent to eligible staff over the next two weeks. Council staff who take early retirement will receive their pension on an unreduced basis.

Staff who are aged under 55 before March 31, 2015, may be considered for voluntary severance if they have been in local government for two or more years.