Golden Boroughs - Southampton City

Despite having around 27 per cent of its government funding withdrawn and consequently having to find £25million in savings in 2011/12, Southampton City Council has backed plans to invest more money than ever before in roads and pavements, protect its libraries and leisure centres from closure, maintain its weekly bin collections and recruit more social workers.

Meanwhile the council still plans to spend millions to bring new economic development and investment to Southampton, which will help the creation of hundreds of new city jobs.

To help find the required savings the council is proposing to cut up to 40 senior management posts, including two directors, strip out bureaucracy and reduce the pay of council workers earning more than £17,500, while protecting the pay of those on the lower pay grades.

The savings plan will protect a further 400 jobs from being lost at the council, and the services those people provide to Southampton residents.

Councillor Royston Smith, Leader of the Council, said: “This has no doubt been one of the most challenging budgets we have ever been faced with. We decided from the outset to protect as many of the front line services that our residents rely on as we can. We will keep libraries, leisure centres and weekly bin collections. We will increase the money we spend on fixing roads and pavements, recruit more social workers to protect our children and we will continue to invest in new development to strengthen our economy and create new jobs.

“This will be achieved by stripping out bureaucracy, cutting senior and middle management and finding millions in efficiency savings. We will ask our highest wage earners to take the biggest pay cuts of up to 5.5 percent, while protecting the salaries of those on lower incomes.

"Councils around the country are closing libraries and shutting down front line services to find their savings. I refuse to go down that route as our residents deserve better.”

Staff earning £17,500 to £22,000 will have their pay cut by 2%, those in the £22,000 to £35,000 bracket will have pay cut by 4.5%, salaries of £35,000 to £65,000 will be slashed by 5% and those those earning more than £65,000 face a 5.5% cut.

There will be a 2 year pay freeze, voluntary redundancies and cuts in councillor's allowances. About 25% of management will be removed.

Needless to say this has not exactly gone down well with the unions who say that the plans are unacceptable to it's members and who have already ballotted for strike action. The council says that employees wil be asked to voluntarilty accept the cuts as it will at least protect their jobs. Anyone who does not accept will be dismissed and offered re-employment on reduced terms. 
 
Steve Brazier, regional manager for Unison's south east branch, said: "The view is the council is blackmailing staff into accepting a pay cut, or accept job losses, which is not fair. This is not a choice that people voted for. These proposals prove it was a lie when the government claimed front-line services would not be affected by their cuts.  Jobs will go and people who provide jobs will be directly affected."

Life is not fair, Steve...

The union also said on the BBC breakfast programme that staff couldn't afford to live on these reduced wages and would be better off out of work - an amazing stance in any view! Presumably they can afford to live on strike pay?

Seems to me that here we have a council that actually has some balls...