Hundreds of Kirklees Council workers to lose their jobs

Sep 16 2009 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

HUNDREDS of council workers will lose their jobs as Kirklees seeks vast savings.

The Examiner can reveal today that plans are to be drawn up to cut at least £250m over five years.

Kirklees Council will slash its budget by a fifth to deal with the public spending squeeze which is expected after the General Election.

The news comes as Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced for the first time yesterday that there would have to spending cuts.

Kirklees director of human resources Cliff Stewart warned yesterday that some of the council’s 11,000 workers would have to go.

He said: “There will be significant staff reductions – many hundreds of jobs.”

But he added: “We will move heaven and earth to avoid compulsory redundancies.”

The move will see a massive review of how all council services except education are managed and run – including senior management posts.

And Mr Stewart admitted that many workers would be worried at the news that cuts are on the way.

He said: “We recognise it’s not just the staff, it’s their families who will be worried as well. This will affect more than 30,000 people when the staff’s families are also taken into consideration. We will do this in a measured way.”

Mr Stewart said the cuts would effect “back office” staff in departments like administration, finance and human relations rather than front-line workers such as binmen and home helps.

He said: “The whole organisation has to become more efficient to improve services to the public.”