A significant number of Fife Council employees have expressed an interest in taking voluntary redundancy or early retirement packages, it has emerged.
With the local authority having to save around £120 million over the next four years to help balance the books, just under 4000 council workers around a fifth of the workforce are understood to have told their employers they are interested in taking voluntary redundancy, early retirement or reducing their hours.
The figures come after the council wrote to employees towards the end of last year asking them if they would like to consider such options and/or whether or not they would be keen on working in more flexible ways such as working from home to help the organisation cut down on costs.
The authority has already confirmed it hopes to cut its workforce by between 10% and 15% by 2014 without the need for compulsory redundancies.
As part of the budget-setting process, Brian Livingston, he council’s finance and resources executive director, will tell councillors a reduction in the workforce is inevitable given the scale of the financial challenge facing them.
“A number of savings proposals put forward by services relate to workforce reduction,” he states in a report to councillors.Mitigate”Whilst every effort will be made to mitigate the need to consider redundancy or early retirement through the use of vacancies, employee turnover, natural retirals, etc, it will be necessary to resort to this option to meet the reductions required to achieve the necessary savings.”
Mr Livingston adds that the ongoing workforce planning exercise in that respect is at an “advanced” stage, with a report to be brought forward to the council’s policy, finance and asset management committee in April.
The challenge for Fife Council is a huge one in that it has to save millions of pounds and reduce the number of people it employs, yet deliver its priorities and maintain customer satisfaction.
Council services are matching notes of interest to areas of potential job reduction, but there has to be a permanent saving associated with letting someone go.
Until this is done, it is not clear how many employees will be allowed to leave the organisation, although trade unions have been kept informed at each stage of the process.
Figures given to councillors last year suggested a third of the council’s 20,000-strong workforce are expected to be eligible for retirement within 15 years.