Staff At Highland Council To Be Offered Voluntary Redundancy or Cuts in Hours

19th December 2015

Highland Council has sent out a communication to all staff with the the option of taking voluntary redundancy or working fewer hours in order to help it weather the cuts recently announced by the Scottish government. Some positions such as teachersof HGV drivers may not be able to take up the offer due to shortages or ring fencing by Scottish Government.

The grant settlement to Local Authorities will be cut by at least 3.5%, Highland will make a Voluntary Redundancy (VR) scheme available to staff, combined with an option for staff to voluntarily reduce their hours.

The grant makes up 80% of the council's budget and so they anticipate a gross budget gap of around £40m next year.

The scheme will be open to all staff, except for staff delivering NHS commissioned services.

Leader of the council, Cllr Margaret Davidson said:‘The Scottish government’s decision puts local authorities in an extremely difficult position. We are already having to deal with the impact of eight years’ of the council tax freeze, and this latest announcement equates to a budget cut of at least a further £16m.

We have no alternative but to cut services and to reduce our workforce accordingly. This will undoubtedly impact on performance and staff morale and there is no getting away from that. This is just the first of many unpalatable decisions we will have to make in the coming weeks and I am deeply saddened to see the council forced into this position.

Budget Leader councillor Bill Fernie said - the position is made worse by the fact that we have £10million of savings already lined up from last years budget under the previous administration meaning we may have to look for over £50 million of total savings in 2016/17. This is the worst settlement for many decades and it follows two years of difficult decisions for councils.

At the Highland Council meeting On Thursday a member of the budget team of four councillors Alister MacKinnon said that a root and branch review of the work of the council would be carried out.