Protest to take place as city council plans to shed hundreds of jobs
A public protest is to be held in Nottingham City Centre on Wednesday urging the council to re-think plans to axe hundreds of jobs.
Unison and Unite have organised the protest in response to the authority’s proposal to shed what is understood to be around 650 jobs along with a raft of other cuts aimed at saving £12.5m a year.
The council’s executive board recently approved plans to axe 150 job but the unions say that another 500 roles could go through voluntary redundancy options currently being offered.
The cuts come after what the ruling Labour group on the council called a “failure” by the Government to cover the costs incurred by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, opposition leaders have pointed to its funding of the loss-making utilities company Robin Hood Energy, from which it has written off £24m of bad debt, and it spending £17m on the failed intu Broadmarsh redevelopment.
The council says it has seen estimated costs and lost income due to Covid-19 soar to £87.9m since the pandemic began.
To date the council has received £23.5m from the government.
In a statement, the unions said: “The trade unions believe that the City Council must not punish the workforce and local communities for the failings of the government and the City Council. The City Council should refuse to make cuts in jobs and services and instead mount a public campaign to demand full funding for council services, including COVID costs.
“An appeal should be made to other Local Authorities to join this campaign.
“In the meantime we call on the City Council to withdraw its plans to cut jobs and services, using further financial reserves and borrowing powers to offset cuts whilst such a campaign is built.”
City Council leader, Cllr David Mellen, said: “We understand unions’ views about protecting jobs and our local communities and have absolutely no desire to make even more cuts. But we have a legal duty to balance our budget and have no alternative when the Government is continuing to massively reduce the funding it provides for local councils.
“Over the past decade, the funding we receive from Government has dropped by over £100m, leaving us to find alternative ways to keep local services running. We acknowledge that failings over Robin Hood Energy have regrettably made things harder, but our budget challenges are primarily due to drastic under-funding from government and their broken promises on fully refunding councils for the costs of tackling Covid.
“Our proposals to meet these budget challenges remain out to consultation, and we will consider realistic proposals which achieve the necessary savings with less impact – but after ten years of government cuts, the task becomes harder. We continue to meet with the unions regularly and will continue to discuss their concerns.”
