E.S.B.C Announces Management Restructure in Advance of Government Cuts

Jul 19th, 2010 | By Chris Towland | Category: Burton Stuff, Info Snippets

East Staffordshire Borough Council is announcing a significant change to its senior management structure designed to improve service provision and meet the challenging financial reductions to be set by Central Government this autumn.

Since coming to power in May, the coalition government has announced a raft of fundamental changes to the way local government will be run including new powers to local councils, communities, neighbourhoods and individuals, and less interference from offices in Whitehall.

However, they have also emphasised that Local Government must play its part in realising savings and reductions in expenditure on a scale never witnessed before in order to meet targets to reduce the country’s deficit. Specifically, local authorities like ESBC have been told to plan for reductions/cuts to local authority services in the region of 30 to 40% over a four-year Government spending period.

Although East Staffordshire Borough Council has constantly been looking at ways to make its services more efficient and value for money for our taxpayers, it is now facing some very difficult decisions in order to find even more ways to reduce spending without significantly affecting service provision.

A freeze in Council Tax in England for at least one year, and a possible freeze for a further year, will also have a significant impact on the amount of money the Council will have to spend on services. Following a detailed look at how the Council can achieve these reductions a restructure has been agreed.

As a result, and following consultation with staff, the Council has made a major change to the structure of its senior management team, resulting in some roles being deleted – saving the Council around £1.6million over the next four years.

Under the current structure the Council’s Chief executive is supported by two Corporate Directors and eight Heads of Service. The new structure deletes eight posts. The Chief Executive will be supported by a core management team made up of five Heads of Service.

As well as the statutory roles of Head of Finance and Head of Legal and Democratic services, these roles will include Head of Built Environment who will take on Growth Point, Green Spaces, Waste Management and Economic Regeneration among other responsibilities, Head of Service Commissioning who will take on the Council’s core services like HR and ICT plus Revenues and Benefits (including Customer Service Centres and Shopmobility) and Cultural Services, and Head of Regulatory Services such as Housing, Building Consultancy, Environmental Health, Engineers (Car Parks), Planning Policy and Development Control.

Chief Executive Andy O’Brien said: “For me this is about demonstrating fairness to staff by recognising that senior management costs should not be out of kilter with ongoing ESBC staff reduction and neighbouring and similar sized authorities.

“The current structure includes a total number of 12 chief officers, costing £1,045,198, 8.3% of the Council’s personnel budget.

“From my perspective, it is the number and quality of my colleague chief officers which enabled the Council to stay ‘on course’ during the 2006 to 2009 period despite changing chief executives on a yearly basis.

“However, in different circumstances with an ever increasing need to deliver ‘more for less’ and public sector cuts, it is necessary to bring our costs down to a level comparable to 2005 and in line with similar councils.

“A reduction of this size will improve value for money across the organisation and we will fare better when compared to nearest neighbours, when management’s value for money status is assessed.”