Warwickshire County Council issues statement about future job loses

This week the council approved its budget, which included a 3.99 per cent increase in Warwickshire County Council’s share of council tax.

The budget also included redundancies being made at the council.

In the agenda for the meeting where the budget was approved it says: "It has to be recognised, some redundancies will be necessary, resulting in a need to fund redundancy costs. Within these budget proposals we will retain £9.1 million Redundancy Fund for realigning services, or more specifically to fund the upfront costs of redundancy."

The Courier approached the council for a statement about the redundancies being made.

Responding, Monica Fogarty, Chief Executive of Warwickshire County Council said: "At full council on February 18, county councillors agreed the 2020/21 budget and medium-term financial plan. The plan outlines a revenue budget and includes a savings programme to be delivered by 2025.”

“This will involve restructuring some services and there may be posts affected. As always, we will work in close partnership with trade union representatives. Throughout any period of change we seek to minimise redundancies as much as possible through redeployment, open vacancies and retirement.

“As we are still in a period of consultation, we cannot comment any further at this time.”

A spokesperson from the Labour group on Warwickshire County Council addressed the redundancies in a part of a new statement issued last on Wednesday evening (February 19).

They said: "The budget report, debated at WCC Full Council this Tuesday, cuts more jobs at the County.

"With just under a third of the Authority’s spending each year is on staffing, the Tories are set to instigate another round of redundancies at WCC to create ‘a reduction in the number of posts…it has to be recognised, some redundancies will be necessary, resulting in a need to fund redundancy costs.

"The budget fund for redundancies is now £9.1 m which was roughly £17m a number of years ago. This money has been used to pay for people to be made redundant, in order to save money."