154 job cuts agreed by city council

Nottingham City Council has voted through 154 job cuts in a bid to save £12.5m.

At a full council meeting yesterday (Monday October 5), councillors voted to make the cuts which will come by deleting vacant posts and accepting voluntary redundancies where possible.

The council is blaming the cuts on unmet Covid costs, along with of Government cuts to its budget.

A series of money-saving measures were also voted through, including:

•Apprentices – delaying the employment of apprentices until next April, saving £450,000 in total
•On street parking machines – replacing most parking machines with cashless machines, promoting pay by phone and card payments
•Parking permits – introducing charge of £25 for households requesting a third residents parking permit, renewable every two years
•Civic roles – reducing the ceremonial duties of the Lord Mayor
•Day Centres – closing one adult-care day centre while maintaining access to a day centre for all users
•Bulwell Hall Golf Course – closing the course from November 2020 and seek an external operator
•Play Areas – closing a small number of underused play areas and those requiring significant improvement.

Councillor Sam Webster, the Council’s Portfolio Holder for Finance, said: “The Government has spent the last decade stripping away the funding for local services across the country that people rely on, placing the financial burden instead on local council tax payers. When Covid hit this year, the Government looked to councils to step up in the fight against it, promising full financial support – a promise they have failed to deliver on, despite our frontline key workers rising to the challenge.

“The combination of a decade of austerity and unmet Covid costs is leaving all councils in a dreadful financial situation, having to take decisions like we have today to cut services and to use reserves to plug the funding gap left by the Government.

“This is no way to fund local services, especially when the Covid crisis has made it clear that the country relies on councils and their workers so much. At the very least, the Government should honour the clear pledge they made at the outset and meet the costs of Covid. The Local Government Association says there’s a £5bn funding gap just for councils to maintain today’s service levels.

“If communities and economies in our cities and towns are to recover well, there must be investment in local public services. In the coming months and years, council services will be needed more than ever. The broken promise must be fixed by ministers urgently.”