North Yorkshire County Council leader Carl Les has refused to rule out future staff redundancies after the new North Yorkshire Council is created on April 1.
In just over a month, the county’s seven district councils and North Yorkshire County Council will be replaced by a new unitary authority called North Yorkshire Council to run services across the county, which will also be led by the Conservative Cllr Les.
A key argument for local government reorganisation was that it would save the taxpayer money but some district councils have faced criticism from the Taxpayers’ Alliance and union officials for offering outgoing chief executives six-figure redundancy packages.
Hambleton District Council and Selby District Council agreed packages worth £225,000 and £210,000 for its outgoing chief executives, Justin Ives and Janet Waggott, respectively.
At a full meeting of North Yorkshire County Council today in Northallerton, Cllr Andy Brown, Green Party member for the Aire Valley division, asked Conservative council leader Carl Les if he can offer assurances that there won’t be similar redundancy payments as a result of the move to the new authority.
In response, Cllr Les said: “I can’t give an assurance that there won’t be further redundancies for posts with the new council because the council will always be looking for efficiencies.”
He added: “I can assure that those redundancy processes will be fair both to employee and taxpayer.”
The vast majority of staff working for the district councils and North Yorkshire County Council will transfer over to the North Yorkshire Council under TUPE terms on April 1.
David Houlgate, Harrogate branch secretary at local government union Unison, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service after today’s meeting that Unison does not expect there to be compulsory redundancies with the new council but there may be voluntary ones.
He added: “We’d look at voluntary redundancies which may in some instances be mutually beneficial for our members and taxpayers but in reality the staffing issue in local government is around recruitment not over-staffing.”
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