Agenda item - Written questions from Councillors.

76.1.      The Mayor reminded Council that written questions from Members and the replies from the appropriate Councillor were taken as read by reference to the list included in the addendum which had been circulated as detailed below:

(a)          Councillor Mac Cafferty

76.2.      “Across the entire Council workforce, how many staff in which departments are currently engaged in a redundancy consultation process?”

Reply from Councillor Hamilton, Deputy Chair (Finance) of the Policy & Resources Committee.

The services covered by these consultations are:-

·      Adults Provider Services

·      Adults Assessment Services

·      Children’s Education and Inclusion

·      Children’s Stronger Families, Youth and Communities  

·      Planning and Building Control

·      City Infrastructure

·      Housing  

The largest groups of staff at risk currently are in Home Care, Children’s Centres, Learning Support Services and the Youth Service and extensive work is ongoing to ensure that redeployment and voluntary severance are used effectively to avoid compulsory redundancy wherever possible.

There are a number of other consultations processes that have not yet started in relation to the 16/17 budget process which mainly relate to services in Adults Provider and Assessment Services where formal consultation processes are due to start over the coming months once public consultation is complete and final decisions have been made about future service provision.”

(b)         Councillor Sykes

76.3.    “Currently there are approximately 360 staff (240 FTE) involved in consultations related to changes or reductions to services, and within these proposals it is likely that approximately 100 staff will require redeployment or will leave the organisation on redundancy.

Can the leader of the Council provide a detailed breakdown (using equivalent budget lines used in the 2015/16 budget papers) of in-year cuts that have been made or are planned for 2015/16 that were not part of the 2015/16 budget agreed by Budget Council?”

Reply from Councillor Morgan, Leader of the Council.

76.4.    “Changes to budgets can only be made in accordance with the rules for transferring budgets under Financial Regulations or by a decision of Policy & Resources Committee or Full Council. Finance Officers have confirmed to me that there have been no cuts to the budgets approved by council for 2015/16. However, the Special Policy & Resources Committee on 4 November 2015 did approve early consultation on the redesign of the Independence at Home Adult Social Care service in order to address unachieved savings this year and enable achievement of further savings over the next 4 years. Although not cuts in budgets, in managing the financial position this year, including substantial social care budget pressures, it is the case that a number of measures have had to be put in place including:

-            Deferring some Planned Maintenance works;

-            Deferring replacement of some ICT equipment, particularly desktop computers;

-            Holding vacancies wherever this can be managed without impacting adversely on service delivery;

-            Restricting the use of agency staffing but, again, only where this does not impact on service delivery;

-            Restricting expenditure on supplies and services where it is not essential or critical to service delivery;

-            Encouraging early service redesign wherever there is an opportunity to do so as set out in the Special Policy & Resources Committee in November 2015.

None of these measures or controls have resulted in cuts to budgets and recruitment and expenditure controls have not been applied to services requiring statutory minimum staffing such as social care provision or assessment. Some things will undoubtedly have been delayed and some non-statutory services may have struggled to meet demands but no budget cuts have been authorised. However, following the Special Policy & Resources Committee, there are cases where services have undertaken service redesign that has resulted in changes to staffing through either vacancies or applications for voluntary severance coming forward. This is normal business and where voluntary severance requests come forward there is an expectation that management will take such opportunities to review how services can be delivered differently given the financial challenges we face.”