Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Council redundancies
Annus Horribilis.
Today the hierarchy at South Tyneside Council must be having similar feelings when they look back on the financial legacy left by 2005.
Part of the impact of a 4.9 million pound deficit in the council's budget became clear yesterday when plans for major job cuts were revealed.
As part of the plans, 132 council posts that currently lie vacant are not to be filled.
And perhaps even more significantly, 87 redundancies need to be found among existing staff.
The council say the job axe will fall in "non-priority" areas.
But it's hard to imagine that redundancies on such a scale will fail to have some impact on council services.
The worrying news comes at a bad time for the ruling Labour group, with the May local elections just weeks away and a new political threat looming from the recently-formed Alliance opposition group.
Yet the politicians have been forced to take the flak for a crisis which, in reality, was out of their hands.
For once I find myself at odds with our local newspaper this evening; by making a statement that infers that elected Councillors had no powers to control spending is rather naive. Not only do they have the power, they also have a duty and responsibility, as well as accountability to the electorate! If the Members were unaware of the monthly expenditures in the executive departments then procedures must surely have been circumvented. If Lead Members, for instance, were unaware of the spending within their departments then at the best they have allowed themselves to be complacent, or at the worst they could be seen to have been negligent. The massive overspend did not happen overnight, it happened over the course of many months.
The expenditure of public funds must always be seen to be in the hands of our elected Councillors, and to suggest otherwise would be to make a mockery of local democracy. No man has yet suggested that our Councillors are simply puppets to be played with by the Officers, or at least I hope not!
Link
The Shields Gazette
_________________________________________________________________
Today the hierarchy at South Tyneside Council must be having similar feelings when they look back on the financial legacy left by 2005.
Part of the impact of a 4.9 million pound deficit in the council's budget became clear yesterday when plans for major job cuts were revealed.
As part of the plans, 132 council posts that currently lie vacant are not to be filled.
And perhaps even more significantly, 87 redundancies need to be found among existing staff.
The council say the job axe will fall in "non-priority" areas.
But it's hard to imagine that redundancies on such a scale will fail to have some impact on council services.
The worrying news comes at a bad time for the ruling Labour group, with the May local elections just weeks away and a new political threat looming from the recently-formed Alliance opposition group.
Yet the politicians have been forced to take the flak for a crisis which, in reality, was out of their hands.
For once I find myself at odds with our local newspaper this evening; by making a statement that infers that elected Councillors had no powers to control spending is rather naive. Not only do they have the power, they also have a duty and responsibility, as well as accountability to the electorate! If the Members were unaware of the monthly expenditures in the executive departments then procedures must surely have been circumvented. If Lead Members, for instance, were unaware of the spending within their departments then at the best they have allowed themselves to be complacent, or at the worst they could be seen to have been negligent. The massive overspend did not happen overnight, it happened over the course of many months.
The expenditure of public funds must always be seen to be in the hands of our elected Councillors, and to suggest otherwise would be to make a mockery of local democracy. No man has yet suggested that our Councillors are simply puppets to be played with by the Officers, or at least I hope not!
Link
The Shields Gazette
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