Hundreds of Kirklees Council staff to leave in the next month

Mar 2 2010 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

HUNDREDS of staff will leave Kirklees Council in the next month.

Director of human resources Cliff Stewart revealed yesterday that 350 workers in their 50s will be given voluntary early retirement.

Kirklees plans to cut its non-school workforce by 1,500 to cope with a public spending squeeze expected after this year’s general election.

The council wrote to all its 11,200 non-school staff in January asking if they would consider taking early retirement or voluntary redundancy.

Mr Stewart said yesterday: “We’re actively considering expressions of interest in early retirement from 350 people. We will be looking for these folks to go in March or April.”

Mr Stewart added that the council was very reluctant to give early retirement to certain groups. He said: “We’re making sure we don’t impact on frontline services so we’re extremely cautious about letting social workers go as they are very hard to recruit.

“There are also people with specific computer skills who we can’t afford to let go.”

Mr Stewart said further redundancies would be decided after the general election. He said: “We will have greater clarity after the election.”

The news comes as a survey shows more jobs will be lost in Kirklees than any other council in England.

New figures show 49 local authorities across the country plan to shed 25,000 jobs to cope with the public spending squeeze expected after the next general election.

Kirklees leads the way, with 1,500 job cuts in the pipeline.