Oldham Council To Cut 800 Jobs

Oldham Council has confirmed 800 jobs are going to be lost, as it struggles to save £25m from its budget for the next financial year. The council has said it will try to avoid compulsory redundancies, and minimise the impact on local services.

The council has been run since May’s elections by the Liberal Democrats in coalition with the Conservatives. It’s the reverse of the situation at Westminster, where the Tories are the senior partners, and it’s the national government which is imposing budget restraints on councils and most other areas of public spending in a bid to tackle the deficit.

According to the council’s statement, released this morning, a 90-day consultation period with staff and unions has now begun. That means nobody will be given their notice until January at the earliest.

Cllr Lynne Thompson: "There are no easy answers."

Cllr Lynne Thompson, the Delph-based Lib Dem who holds the Performance and Value for Public Money portfolio on Oldham Council’s Cabinet, said: “This is a very serious step and one that we do not take lightly, but it is also unavoidable as we face up to the well-documented financial pressures affecting the budgets of every single UK local authority. The simple facts are that we need to find £25m in savings for the financial year 2011/12 – plus a projected further £20m in 2012/13 – and there are no easy answers.”

She went on to call for “meaningful dialogue” with staff and unions: “This is not a series of final decisions – those will only be taken after the 90-day consultation period. Each proposed reduction will be considered against criteria that include an assessment of how crucial a post is, what it delivers, and how readily its loss can be absorbed or compensated for.”

The leader of the council’s opposition Labour group, Cllr Jim McMahon, blamed the Westminster government for the job losses. He told Saddleworth News: “Cuts on this scale are the result of a government using the budget deficit as a way to see through their right wing ideology. The impact of these cuts on the lives of many Oldhamers will be felt for decades.”

Cllr Jim McMahon: "The impact of these cuts... will be felt for decades."

He added: “That said it is then a big jump to focus 600 of the 800 redundancies on Social Services which will affect the most vulnerable people in the borough. Rather than simply swiping from the sidelines Labour will be preparing an alternative budget which will counter the Lib Dem view that they had no other choice.”

It’s not clear yet what impact the cuts could have on services in Saddleworth specifically. Although in an interview with Saddleworth News earlier this year, council leader Cllr Howard Sykes said he was “keen” to protect services in our area which gave people “a sense of community.”

He listed sport facilities, help for voluntary groups, museums and libraries as services he particularly wanted to continue to provide. He said: “I think we’ve got a proud record here of actually investing in some of those things specifically within Saddleworth, whether it’s the tourist place in Uppermill, and some of the other things we’ve supported these last two years which traditionally the council hasn’t supported before.”

We’ll get more information about other proposed spending cuts later this month, when Chancellor George Osborne announces the outcome of the national spending review. That’s scheduled for 20 October.

(UPDATE 8/10: The council’s statement can now be read in full here. The Oldham Advertiser has published an article here)

Author: Jude Gidney - Editor

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