South Tyneside Independents» South Tyneside Council

The South Tyneside 350!

At the October 2009 meeting of the Borough Council the leader of the Independent Alliance revealed that South Tyneside Council would be making up to 350 of it’s employees redundant. Within minutes of our revelations being made all council employees received an e-mail from the Acting Chief Executive informing them of the news.

Staff have now received a second e-mail which explains why the redundancies are necessary. It also provides further details of how it go about finding 350 redundancies.

The council say they are working with their trades union colleagues to find a solution that will help them achieve significant budget savings over the next couple of years and that they are exploring all options including giving all employees funded through the main council budget, the opportunity to express an interest in leaving the council, in other words they are looking for people to take voluntary redundancy.

The council has started sending letters out to groups of employees in an effort to identify those who would like to take early retirement or voluntary redundancy. They are also encouraging staff to consider making use of existing opportunities to reduce working hours through the voluntary hours policy or consider the opportunities available for flexible retirement.

The need to make these redundancies has arisen because the council needs to make £21 million savings over the next two years and believes that this cannot be done without reducing it’s workforce.

The ruling Labour group will of course blame central government for these job losses (Labour Government) and there will be no reference to it’s own record of financial mis-management and incompetence .. remember the £11 million black hole?