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150 jobs axed in cash crisis
Thursday 27th November 2008, 11:56AM GMT.
At least 150 extra jobs are to be axed at Wolverhampton City Council and £41million to be cut from services, the Express & Star can reveal.
Care homes may shut, five libaries be drastically reduced and next year’s Christmas Festival be cancelled as the council tries to plug its financial black hole.
The shake-up, the biggest the council has faced, is blamed on the global economic crisis. Cuts will happen by 2011.
Thirty separate service cuts have been disclosed to the Express & Star, including slashing £750,000 from youth services.
Five of the city’s least used libraries may only be used for dropping off books.
They are Bradmore, Underhill and Scotlands, Daisy Bank, Oxley and Mary Pointon, Woodcross.
Council departments are to be centralised, Christmas lights reduced in the city centre, Bilston and Tettenhall, and the Learning Disability residential care home, Sweetman Street, close.
The announcement comes on the same day it was revealed that 27 jobs are set to go at Cannock Chase District Council and Walsall Council bosses failed to rule out redundancies as it fights its own financial problems.
Wolverhampton’s leader, Tory Councillor Neville Patten, said he “expected a hostile response” because of the scale of the cuts and job losses.
Pressures
He said: “It’s always very sensitive when people have to lose their jobs but the council is not immune from the pressures of the economy. The funding we are getting from the Government is not good and we also have a mess that Labour left behind before we took control in May.”
The 150 job losses across the council, will take place after May 2009 and continue until 2011, but workers have been warned that it could be more if the recession begins to bite.
Losses follow the announcement in September of 300 job cuts in five departments.
Councillor Roger Lawrence, city Labour group leader, said the crisis was overstated.
Unison branch secretary Adrian Turner said: “You cannot make savings of this kind without it impacting on jobs and services and we cannot rule out industrial action.”
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I didn’t even know Bradmore had a library and I’ve lived there for 10 years!
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Your problems wolverhampton council are nothing to do with the economic meltdown! Other councils are coping well enough. Your problem exists because of shoddy management over the last few years.
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As usual the council are hitting out at the lower paid jobs instead of the management that cause the problems in the first place, with their high unearned wages and expenses claims. For every top management job 4 workers could keep their jobs, so why don’t they use common sense and remove unnecessary management, group departments and do us all a favor in the process by getting rid of the problem causers instead.
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New Labour. New disaster.
They wasted every opportunity they had over the last 11 years to put aside a bit of cash and run a tight ship. Instead they taxed and spent. Often on pathetic, unwanted, unneccessary services.
Now they have to cut back real services due to the mess that has been left behind.
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Nelson Mandela House, i thought that was in Peckham. Old people should be treated with dignity and respect, not herded like cattle, so please treat them well.
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Well well well.
The unions won’t be getting any support for me. They are the ones who paid the crooked labour council that got Wolverhampton into this mess.
They should take the share of the blame and forget about any action as it will be totally unwelcome.
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Yet again another shambles at Wolverhampton Council. Personally I would call in the Receivers and let them sort out the Labour balls up! Overpaid management, managers for managers, for managers all earning in excess of £50k and lets not forget a chief exec who earns in excess of £120k that is where the job cuts should come and not at the expense of services and the lower paid jobs
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Ref No4 Dave. Dear boy i take it your not old enough to recall the Thatcher years.Go to a library ( before they shut) and look up a booked called The Thatcher Years. Then come on this board and please respond.Yes Labour has dropped numerous cogs but even they were in power another 10 years it would not be as bad as it was then .Remember the situation we are in at the moment is Global.Multi-Nationals business’s know that one of the markets they operate it will always be in recession ( or close to) however this if the first time every market in the world is wrecked. Anyway enjoy your read.
Cut backs are unfortunate however, there are enough wasters working in every company private or public who if identified correctly probably deserve to go.
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answer for cpt. wolf. bradmore library is in bantock house, i have lived in pennfields for 8 years and i had to look it up on tinternet.
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how can the council justify a deputy chief executive as a new post with as salary of £89,000
Pure scandal
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Billyquietwolf. Dear boy, do you think the millions of pounds wasted on the ill-conceived and recently terminated BT partnership contract?
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There has never been a town so much destroyed by its council than that of Wolverhampton.
They seem to have done everything in their power to bring the town to its demise.No facilities, no shops,no parking which adds up to no visitors.
The only ones that do well from the town are the tramps,beggers,yobs and traffic wardens!
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No 12 its a City. Or so they tell me. Born and bred there myself maybe it should have stayed a town because city status hasn’t done much for it has it?
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Ref Misery Guts, sorry i dont understand the question? Are we talking about THE BT? As in back tomorrow?
PS SHOULD YOU BE WORKING INSTEAD OF ON THIS SITE? YOU DONT WORK FOR THE COUNCIL DO YOU?
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Hey, it’s not all doom and gloom, Greggs is open all through the night to serve the drunken yobs with sausage rolls.
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Got a nutcase in charge of the country and we have got a nutcase in charge of Wolverhampton. The former cabbie who runs Wolverhampton Tory party wouldn’t last five minutes in the real world. If a business is in trouble you cut costs (ie jobs) not services.
Do the tories think the point of the council is to employ people or to provide services?
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As Phil H (no.4) says, it is always the lower paid jobs that have to go and it’s true!
So how about this as a suggestion – for every 10 low-paid jobs, let’s say @£15,000 per annum each (thats £150,000), make redundant 2 managers at say a modest £75,000 per annum each. The Council balances it’s books, the libraries etc can stay open, the low-paid workers keep their jobs and the golf-happy – dining out to lunch – big car executives can have a taste of what it’s like to have no work!
The only trouble is, these high-fliers can walk into any job, anywhere because they all have friends in high places, unlike the low-paid workers!!!
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Ref 15. Have you tasted the sausage rolls? Trust me it is doom and gloom.
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Hallelujah!!!!!
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Excellent news, lets hope there is plenty more to follow – truth is everyone knows most people who work at the council couldnt manage a week in the real world..reality bites!
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Think Big Council and ask yourself, “Are you really necessary?”
Why are we bothering to collect waste separately when we are all strapped for cash?
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Somebody needs to look at the amount there spending on contract staff. They’ve got rid of some now the partnership’s dead but there’s still a lot left who’ve bin there for years and get paid stupid amounts….£750 a day i’ve heard.
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As george (17) says it is the lower Paid jobs that have to go.
If this was american run they axe people from the top managment down wards has they all have qualifications and can get a job anywhere and keep there low paid workers who do most of the work keeping the council running, qualifications do not always count in a job
has the chief executive has proofed, he is not qualified to do the job and needs a deputy to help him out should not have got the position.
2 people to do a 1 man job costing over £200.000.00 what a saving start there then the councillors next to make cuts.
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Torquay man- stick to your nice little safe riviera and leave the hard working blackcountry folks to get on in the real world. I hope your job is safe where ever it is!!!!!!!Idiots talk don’t they
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However – they can afford to let fireworks off from the roof for Christmas and tromp real reindeer through the town.
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I would like to be a fly on the wall when they become third class citizens and have to try to convince their ex work mates at Council tax benefit that their income is now £60.50p a week.
get ready to struggle!
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If you cut more jobs, then the services that your employers are paying for ie. the public won’t have to be cut. The threat of cutting services is yet again a threat to each and every council tax payer in this area. How dare they, it is time we cleaned these offices out and got rid of these underworked civil servants.
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Torquay man – I hope by sayin most you mean the managers!!! I for one am hardworking and underpaid unlike the Top tier managers who appear to get to go to conferences and saty in 5 star hotels – i agree with some of these post – get rid of the higer tier managers there are too may of them!!!!!!
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Well to all those who voted in the conservatives AND the lib dems, well done, so far they have wasted millions on scrapping road projects and contracts and its not even their first year yet. Wait till the end of next year, that’s if Wolverhampton is still Independent by then. Now we pay 2 lots of councillors instead of one to destroy our city.
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Its not just Wolverhampton the Tories have made a mess of. Dudley is in dire straits. Five libraries shut but they have a chief executive on £130,000 and a mayor in a limo! They were relying on selling off public land to balance the books and thats fallen through. Funny how councils always blame the last lot when things go badly, but never praise their opponents when things go well.
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Karl sorry to inform you but thats not a raindeer they tromp through town. It’s one of their council leaders.
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I go to daisy Bank library when I can, and tend to read the books there, or use the internet, and not always take a book out. I find it’s a real shame that the council works out how many books are issued per visitor, when sometimes I go without taking a book out. That’s the data they are using, and working out it costs the council £5 for every book taken out. they don’t have a way of measuring the other uses of the library. A library isn’t just for taking books out, it’s more than that. Perhaps the council should think about opening the libraries for longer hours, allowing those of us who work to get there. For example, daisy Bank is not open evenings and weekends, so I can only go on the days I finish at 4, and even then it’s a rush.
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CHRIS – I’ll meet you in Queens Square with some rotten veg then!!
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Council plans to shut underhill house is criminal, these people at civic centre who makes the decision if its shuts need to go to the home and see that its not just a house. For these elderly frail people,this is their home and what right have the council got to turf them out.Council should be ashamed of themselves.
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will my council tax go down with all these cuts or will i see another RISE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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