Kirklees Council's 'worst budget in borough's history' will see unknown number of redundancies

A senior councillor has labelled Kirklees’ budget as the worst in the history of the borough as uncertainty surrounds the number of jobs that are to be lost.

The council’s draft budget was published last week and discussed on Tuesday (February 13) at a meeting of Kirklees Council’s cabinet. The document sets out the local authority’s spending plans for the next financial year 2024/25 and how it will make a necessary £34.5m saving to balance its books.

Tough money saving measures were already in place across the council to address the £47m shortfall being faced earlier in the current year, with some coming into force last year, including a freeze on recruitment. It was also announced last July that the council was looking to make up to 750 redundancies across its workforce to lessen the financial strain.

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An initial wave of 250 redundancies was anticipated to take place by March this year, though it came to light during the meeting that no redundancies have been made as of yet. This followed a question to cabinet from leader of Kirklees’ Conservative group, Coun David Hall, who wanted to know the impact the proposed 2024/25 budget will have on council staff.

Councillor Graham Turner of Kirklees CouncilCouncillor Graham Turner of Kirklees Council
Councillor Graham Turner of Kirklees Council

In response cabinet member for finance and regeneration, Coun Graham Turner, who had described the budget as the worst in Kirklees’ history earlier in the meeting said it was “difficult to say” how many jobs are at risk. He explained that nobody has been made redundant, with staff being redeployed and retrained to fill different roles where possible.

Coun Turner continued: “We do have a natural churn in normal circumstances of about 100 people a month anyway. Obviously some of those people who leave, we will need to replace because they have some very specialist skills.

“Where it’s possible and lots has already happened, people will be redeployed into other areas where they have a skill set that matches those jobs.

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“I can assure you I and my colleagues will do absolutely everything we can to reduce or eliminate redundancies because unfortunately they cost us a lot of money, and it’s not fair to our staff to make people redundant when we may have another opportunity within the council to retrain.

“Our aim is to retain as many staff as possible and not go down the route of redundancies.”

The draft budget document says that the service redesign and vacancy management will put several full time equivalent (FTE) jobs at risk in areas across the council. Recently, we reported that the proposed closure of Huddersfield’s Customer Service Centre and integration of customer services into the borough’s libraries will impact 32.5 FTE roles in 2024/25, and a further 14.5 in 2025/26.

On Wednesday, March 6, the whole of the council will decide whether to approve the draft budget.

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