Town Centre News

Council agrees first phase of saving plans

Posted on 30/11/2010

Councillors have agreed on the first phase of savings at Rochdale Borough Council following a cabinet decision to approve their phase one efficiency proposals.

Around 70 staff are likely to be made redundant, following the decisions made after a three month staff, trade union and public consultation. The council currently needs to save £50 million in the next financial year (April 2011 – March 2012.)

An initial £8million of savings will be implemented from next month, with a further £5 million of proposals deferred into the second phase of savings following feedback during the consultation. As a result, a number of phase one decisions will not be made until February 2011.

Decisions (made 25 November 2010) include:

Reducing management related costs, including restructuring and deletion of posts
Budget savings in core services (Legal/Human Resources/Finance/ Performance and Transformation)
Reviewing schools Service Level Agreements (SLA’s)
Reducing the Schools Improvement Team
Removing the town twinning budget
Reducing the weekly courier service
Reducing the budget of the Rochdale Development Agency
Reducing annual expenditure on library books
Reducing management posts in the Library and Customer Access Services
Reducing Children’s Fund Activity (activities for 8-13 year olds)

These initial decisions will begin to be implemented from the beginning of December.

The decision on a reduction to the Link4Life budget related to the boroughs arts, heritage and Touchstones café has been deferred to phase 2 following public consultation.

Chief Executive Roger Ellis said that a lot of good ideas have been generated during the consultation:

“I fully appreciate this is more unwelcome news at a generally unsettling time for many people. We are doing all we can to ensure staff are kept informed of decisions as they are made and we are continuing to work with the unions to minimise redundancies. This is a challenging time for everyone.”

Deputy Council Leader Ashley Dearnley said:

“We need to find significant savings to our budget whilst continuing to deliver hundreds of essential services, so many budgets have had to be reduced and some spending has had to stop. We have made these decisions after listening carefully to the thoughts of residents, staff, partners and councillors. We are working closely with our partners in the drive for greater efficiency, and whilst we still need to make more savings, we want to keep redundancies to a minimum.”

The second phase of council saving proposals announced earlier this month are now available for public consultation. To have your say you can call into your local library or council customer service centre, visit www.rochdale.gov.uk/yourviews or send your comments by post to Phase Two Public Consultation, Floor 6, Telegraph House, Baillie Street, Rochdale OL16 1JA.