Hundreds of jobs will go at Clacks Council

Around 350 full-time equivalent jobs could go over the next few years.

To be used as a last resort after redeployment options have been exhausted, all employees' jobs are under threat as compulsory redundancies can now be invoked to reduce the council's workforce in order to balance the books.

During a lengthy debate, both sides were keen to shift the blame and were not so eager to accept responsibility.

In their report council officers outlined how over the past five years reserves were utilised, in part, to plug the funding gaps, with just over £14million spent by the SNP administration.

At the time this strategy was viewed as acceptable given future savings were anticipated. However, the financial benefits have not been fully achieved and with anticipated future demand pressures and reserve levels, this approach is not considered suitable.

This position was also backed by other qualified professionals at Deloitte, the council's external auditors. They also projected the local authority's reserves would diminish by 2019/20 if savings are not identified and stressed: “It is therefore critical that savings plans are agreed and implemented.”

The SNP side highlighted that while reserves had previously been used, they were also being topped up.

In 2012/13 uncommitted reserves stood at £1.392million, in 2016/17 they were at £1.379m. The capital receipts reserves for PPP started off at £1.362m and now stands at zero according to the document.

However, the local authority is now facing unprecedented pressures. The funding gap, as a percentage of the next expenditure, is 6.6 per cent ahead of this year's budget – the highest in the whole of Scotland according to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre.

The audit says the cumulative gap will reach 14 per cent by 2019/20. In comparison, the 2012/13 gap was just above two per cent.

Councillors were also told significantly higher savings are now required and the uptake of voluntary severance came nowhere near the required levels.

Chief executive Elaine McPherson said there are “inherent constraints” in the voluntary approach, which became “increasingly unmanageable”.

SNP Councillor Craig Holden questioned why officers became openly critical of policies and said it was a matter for politicians to decide if an approach was suitable.

Responding, the chief executive told him the information provided was based on facts.

Cllr Holden also accused officers of using compulsory redundancies to “threaten” staff into accepting a voluntary severance package.

He said: “This mechanism will be used as a tool to intimidate them to take voluntary severance.”

Depute chief executive Nikki Bridle responded: “As a senior member, I would not threaten any staff. But [this policy] could assure savings are delivered.”

On the other hand, Cllr Gary Womersley argued the SNP's Making Clackmannanshire Better programme was all about avoiding compulsory redundancies by redesigning service delivery to meet future needs.

In a theatrical move, he stood up to make a passionate speech against the proposals and said the paper was premature and lazy with no specific outcomes.

Labour members accused the SNP of running away from the council because they knew they could not get a legal budget without breaking their party promise on redundancies.

Cllr Janet Cadenhead said: “We were left to clean up the SNP mess, take the hard decisions, less than a year before election.”

She added: “What we are doing is not through choice, but absolute necessity.”

Other Labour members echoed the sentiment that no one likes to take hard decisions, but there would not be a council if they did not take over after the SNP's resignation in May.

They also said that a managed contraction of the workforce should have started earlier and added the move was necessary to save the council from financial collapse in the future.

Council leader Bobby McGill explained that under the previous policy, the council could not let go of workers who are offered redeployment, but are not prepared to make the move.

He said: “I don't think any elected member comes into politics to make cuts.

“We are in a ludicrous situation. When we ask people to go into a new position, they are not willing and we can't get rid of them. This could not happen in any other industry.

“The previous administration put hard decisions off for years.”

He said change is necessary and added it was “unheard of” that an administration would “run away” from the council.

Cllr Holden suggested the SNP were “the fall guys” in the situation, and added his party was united in its approach to keeping people in jobs.

As to how the SNP would present a legal budget without compulsory redundancies, group leader Cllr Les Sharp told the Advertiser the day after the meeting: “We have got a budget in mind, but I'm not simply going to reveal it to the papers – no disrespect there – we've got no indication of what the Labour budget is going to be like, what they are going to do.

“So on that one, we are going to keep our cards quite close to our chest.

“We wouldn't reveal our budget at this stage, to be honest with you, we've not even been given a budget date yet, let alone what it's going to look like.”

He went on to attack Labour, adding: “In my previous years, we had full member briefings on what we were looking at, what we were proposing, which everyone was involved in through MCB (Making Clackmannanshire Better programme) and business cases.

“We've not been afforded that this year.”

Labour opted to use redundancies to cut down on costs. The Advertiser asked what tools Cllr Sharp's side would use to balance the budget.

He said: “If you look at my last budget, it did use some reserves, but it was minimal. What Labour has failed to do this year is [capitalise] on what we've put forward before we stood down.”

Referring to the paper relating to the administration's plans to hire external support for a whole organisational redesign, more on that in the Advertiser later, he added: “They are going to spend £500,000 on consultants. We had a baseline of a total reorganisation of the council, so that's where we would be looking, not immediately, but for the future.

“They are looking at spending money, which is ridiculous in a lot of respects. We are looking to reorganise the council from within – a total reorganisation of what Clackmannanshire would look like on the council.

“They chose not to carry that forward, the baseline plans were there. They chose not to take that forward, now they are looking at spending £0.5million of public money on employing someone who doesn't even know what the county looks like.”

He said his party would move forward with a reorganisation on a “very big scale”.

The administration's paper on the restructure, which sought approval for the council to hire an external party to deliver a plan for a whole organisational rethink, said comparable commissions cost between £80,000 and £500,000.

The SNP's Walter McAdam did not attend the meeting because of urgent family matters. Correction from yesterday's article: there was not a tie on the vote, all present nationalist councillors voted against, Labour and Tory Alastair Campbell voted for.