Small increase in staff numbers at Wyre Forest District Council (From Kidderminster Shuttle)

Small increase in staff numbers at Wyre Forest District Council

7:40am Friday 15th March 2013 in News By William Tomaney

WYRE Forest District Council has bucked the trend of falling staff numbers in local authorities by increasing its employee total.

An analysis of official data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) by the GMB union shows between early 2010 and late 2012, the number of people employed at the authority increased by 11 – 2.4 per cent – from 449 to 460.

Nationally, data was collected from 407 local authorities in Britain and showed there are 380,500 fewer people employed by councils than when the current Government came to power in 2010.

For Worcestershire County Council, the number of employees fell 20.7 per cent from 17,691 to 14,030. Lower tier authorities Malvern Hills, Redditch, Worcester City and Wychavon also saw falls but Bromsgrove increased its workforce by 14 per cent.

Wyre Forest District Council leader, Conservative John Campion, warned against comparing the figures like for like but said his authority had tried to strike a balance between savings and cuts.

“We have taken some workers on because of the North Worcestershire Economic Development and Regeneration Service for example, so it is difficult to compare like for like,” he added.

“Our programme, however, is about delivering savings, not just cuts. For example, moving to Wyre Forest House is saving us £500,000 a year – without doing that we would have had to find savings elsewhere, which may have included cutting staff.

“We realise we have to have the right workforce delivering the right services.”

According to the GMB, most job losses have come from freezing vacancies, redundancies and wastage as a result of budget cuts.

Some of the falls come from movements between the public and private sectors, such as when schools become academies.

Joe Morgan, GMB regional secretary, launched a stinging attack on the figures, saying: “Not a single council worker ever contributed anything to the financial crisis they are being made to pay the price for.”