Council announces cost-cutting restructure

Bury Council has taken its latest move to save money by cutting the number of its directorates from four to three.

The three new directorates are:

• Department for Resources and Regulation (formerly Chief Executive’s)
• Department for Children, Young People and Culture (formerly Children’s Services), and
• Department for Communities and Wellbeing (formerly Adult Care Services).

Details of the new service configurations are available on the council’s web site.

The move will save £150,000 in a full year, but ultimately make it easier to make the huge cuts that the council will have to find in the coming years.

The following figures outline the scale of the cuts that the council has already had to make and will have to find:

·  2011/12 --- £9.5m

·  2012/13 --- £8.6m

·  2013/14 --- £9.8m

·  2014/15 --- £9.6m

·  2015/16 --- £15.8m

·  2016/17 --- £15.5m

Total --- £69.1m

Councillor Mike Connolly, leader of Bury Council, said: “I have said on previous occasions that the council is facing unprecedented financial and organisational challenges. The move to a smaller council is inevitable and timely, and we need to focus on areas of greatest need. It also involves better co-ordination of services, and encouraging our communities to be more self-reliant.

“To help protect front-line services, I believe that the creation of three departments is the most feasible and deliverable in the current circumstances. This is designed to manage, commission and deliver council services in a more effective way given the challenges we face and the cuts we have to make going forward.

“Staying as we are is not a sustainable option. We will have lost more than 50% of our Government funding since 2010, which strikes at the very heart of what we do and what the public have got used to us doing. Over the next two years the council is entering uncharted waters, and I hope that residents will appreciate the impact that such financial reductions are having our ability to maintain historical levels of service.”

The restructure means that Graham Atkinson, currently executive director of the Department of Communities and Neighbourhoods, will take voluntary redundancy in September.

The heads of the three new departments are:

• Mark Carriline - Executive Director: Children, Young People and Culture
• Pat Jones-Greenhalgh – Executive Director: Communities and Well Being
• Mike Owen – Executive Director: Resources and Regulation

Mike Kelly, the council’s chief executive, said: “It’s business as usual. All the current contact numbers and access to services remain unchanged. Inevitably there will be changes, but these will take place over the coming months. The staff have done a magnificent job under very difficult circumstances over the past three years and we have done our very best to protect front-line services for residents and vulnerable people. This has largely been done by making savings ‘in house’ and being even more efficient which has seen the loss of some 400 jobs in the process.”

ENDS

Press release issued: 3 April 2014.