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Hampshire County Council rationalising to the tune of £55m in 2011/12


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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-12223558

 

In Hampshire, staff and unions are being consulted over the job cuts which affect 8% of the workforce.

 

The authority says it plans to save £7m by cutting senior management, implement a recruitment freeze and save £10m by renegotiating contracts.

 

"Included within this programme are plans to reduce our pay bill, which makes up 51% of our overall budget."

He said it hoped to achieve this through voluntary measures and minimise compulsory redundancies.

 

"But sadly there will be some staff who will face compulsory redundancy," he added.

 

Other savings include a reduction in the county council subsidy it gives commercial bus operators to run less used services.

Budgets for child protection, highways maintenance and schools will be protected, the authority said.

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Any money due from PFC ?

 

How many services and jobs could be saved if those coooooonts paid thier outstanding bills.

 

Good point - puts these "efficiency savings" into perspective.....a whole county council cutting back less than half of Pompey's debts - perhaps this country's deficit isn't as big (psychologically) as we imagine....

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angelman

 

one of the biggest costs is occupational health pay plus the additional costs of getting temporary staff in to cover for care and education staff who are regularly off sick . And im not referring to those wh are genuinely or terminally ill. The figures are staggering

 

Re pension its still easy to get rid of someone through ill health retirement even though they are fit to work

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-12223558

 

In Hampshire, staff and unions are being consulted over the job cuts which affect 8% of the workforce.

 

The authority says it plans to save £7m by cutting senior management, implement a recruitment freeze and save £10m by renegotiating contracts.

 

"Included within this programme are plans to reduce our pay bill, which makes up 51% of our overall budget."

He said it hoped to achieve this through voluntary measures and minimise compulsory redundancies.

 

"But sadly there will be some staff who will face compulsory redundancy," he added.

 

Other savings include a reduction in the county council subsidy it gives commercial bus operators to run less used services.

Budgets for child protection, highways maintenance and schools will be protected, the authority said.

 

Obviously I don't want people to lose their jobs, but cutting senior management and renegotiating contracts is always going to be a winner with the public. It's a shame it has to get to that level before people take action, bit everywhere is the same, especially in the private sector.

 

Companies inplement a recruitment freeze, then fill up on a shed load of contract staff. Generally, people/management need to PLAN better, well in advance.

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staff costs account for 57% of the budget.

 

I am not sure where this figure of 8% of the workforce being made redundant comes from. In 2009/10 the county council employed 42.249 people. So 1,200 people comes to under 3%.

 

Net cost of services: Pension interest cost and expected return on pensions assets was budgeted at £24.7 but was revised (and actually was) £57.7m

Deficit for the year on the Income and Expenditure Account: Contribution from pensions reserve was originally budgeted at £ -6.5m but was revised (and actual) to £ -36.6m (nb the minus sign to this contribution)

 

So there you are an increase of £60m from the pension scheme alone.

Edited by angelman
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We have lost 10% each year for the last 20 years... Even though the redundancy offer is reducing each time there is no shortage of people trying to escape.

One day it might be me... LOL

 

I doubt there wil be need to have compulsery redundcies as long as they stay below 12%.

They could offer people 6 month sebaticals (on 1/4 wage or less) to try out another career. many dont return.

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The whole set up is a complete circus and the waste incurred by the management is unbelievable - as an ex employee for 9 years I can tell you if Alan Sugar was running this place I know what he would say. 1 tiny tiny example - I wanted to purchase an RCD plug for 1 piece of equipment - was informed by the management only to purchase from their own HCC supplier .... B&Q = £6 county supplier raked in at just under £15 - its a shame that so many hard workers on the "shopfloor" will suffer where as the senior management well - thay have an easy ride for so long -

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Qwerty makes a fair point but there is a converse one... there are a great number of selfish, lazy "workers" among the white collar staff at all councils who frankly don't give a toss, go sick for three weeks a year etc and are generally inefficient... they might have to cut it in the private sector now :-O

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The whole set up is a complete circus and the waste incurred by the management is unbelievable - as an ex employee for 9 years I can tell you if Alan Sugar was running this place I know what he would say. 1 tiny tiny example - I wanted to purchase an RCD plug for 1 piece of equipment - was informed by the management only to purchase from their own HCC supplier .... B&Q = £6 county supplier raked in at just under £15 - its a shame that so many hard workers on the "shopfloor" will suffer where as the senior management well - thay have an easy ride for so long -

 

I had a similar situtation with the bank I used to work for (they weren't part-nationalised either at the time!)...they explained it away by saying that the cost of the item as quoted by the official parts supplier to employees internally wasn't the value that the bank actually ended up paying for it as there was some sort of 'claw-back' system in place with the supplier. Could be similar situation with public sector suppliers? dunno, perhaps not

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Hampshire County council workers, excluding teachers, took on average 10 days off through illness last year — compared to 9.6 days in 2008. The sickness rate is far higher than the private sector, where employees took an average 5.8 days.

 

In total, county council staff took 113,853 sick days last year.

average teachers sickness is about the same . thats an awful lot of sick pay and on top and replacement costs HCC has to find each year. I wonder how many of those on regular sickness absence will lose their jobs, being equally interesting to see what criteria they will use to make people redundant. sad sad times indeed

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I had a similar situtation with the bank I used to work for (they weren't part-nationalised either at the time!)...they explained it away by saying that the cost of the item as quoted by the official parts supplier to employees internally wasn't the value that the bank actually ended up paying for it as there was some sort of 'claw-back' system in place with the supplier. Could be similar situation with public sector suppliers? dunno, perhaps not

 

I can only talk with any knowledge about the NHS as I used to be a Procurement Manager. There most certainly are claw-backs. For example, I negotiated a Dry Goods contract (flour, sugar, cereals - you get my drift) with a very well know large supplier based, IIRC, in Petersfield. A figure was agreed, and for every £20K over that figure, the NHS Trust received a % back. The bigger the amount over the 'figure', the bigger the % retrospective discount. When you consider that I was buying for all the hospitals and clinics in the greater Portsmouth area (is that an oxymoron - greater and Portsmouth?), then you can see that the discount ended up being substantial. I should add that there was a national NHS contract for the supply of these goods, but I got a better deal negotiating outside that contract.

 

Another thing to bear in mind too is that, as with e.g. Tesco, there will be loss-leaders. So QWERTY might well have got his RCD plug for less from B & Q but I bet his employer's contracted supplier could provide other stuff cheaper than B & Q. Any local authority with any nous will negotiate Framework Contracts. These mean that buyers can price-match and get the best deal.

 

Hampshire CC used to be held up as good practice and indeed led a Procurement Hub for many local councils and NHS Trusts in the South. This meant the Hub's members could draw from these large contracts at very advantageous rates. Certainly in the NHS we had to make a 6% reduction in non-pay spend year on year (I'm talking late 90s / early 2000s) and we achieved it.

 

A final point is that contracted suppliers will offer more than just goods. They provide training / upgrades / add-ons often at no extra charge (e.g. heart monitoring equipment).

 

Here endeth the first Procurement lesson :D

Edited by bridge too far
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I can only talk with any knowledge about the NHS as I used to be a Procurement Manager. There most certainly are claw-backs. For example, I negotiated a Dry Goods contract (flour, sugar, cereals - you get my drift) with a very well know large supplier based, IIRC, in Petersfield. A figure was agreed, and for every £20K over that figure, the NHS Trust received a % back. The bigger the amount over the 'figure', the bigger the % retrospective discount. When you consider that I was buying for all the hospitals and clinics in the greater Portsmouth area (is that an oxymoron - greater and Portsmouth?), then you can see that the discount ended up being substantial. I should add that there was a national NHS contract for the supply of these goods, but I got a better deal negotiating outside that contract.

 

Another thing to bear in mind too is that, as with e.g. Tesco, there will be loss-leaders. So QWERTY might well have got his RCD plug for less from B & Q but I bet his employer's contracted supplier could provide other stuff cheaper than B & Q. Any local authority with any nous will negotiate Framework Contracts. These mean that buyers can price-match and get the best deal.

 

Hampshire CC used to be held up as good practice and indeed led a Procurement Hub for many local councils and NHS Trusts in the South. This meant the Hub's members could draw from these large contracts at very advantageous rates. Certainly in the NHS we had to make a 6% reduction in non-pay spend year on year (I'm talking late 90s / early 2000s) and we achieved it.

 

A final point is that contracted suppliers will offer more than just goods. They provide training / upgrades / add-ons often at no extra charge (e.g. heart monitoring equipment).

 

Here endeth the first Procurement lesson :D

 

By Jove....I do rather suspect we may have agreed on something! I say, This calls for a bottle of champers and fois gras canapés to celebrate, eh what?

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My information is that the cull of grades E and above is now complete.

 

Having had a sneaky at the terms offered to them I would be very surprised if the same is offered to the lower frontline staff. I hope I am wrong but fear that I am not as that WOULD give people something to moan about.

 

I was the other day going to start a thread (RANT) about the Echo revealation about secret bonus payments that have been made this year. It's not just the Director level one's that get my goat, there have been quite a few lower grade staff that have received them for efficiencies and showing imiciative. I am dead against them persoanally as I see that as part of mine and their's core responsibility, anyone NOT working with them in mind should right;ly have their arses kicked.

 

I thought that we (HCC staff) were supposed all in this together and expect any deals to be done on that basis.

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Re reacher sickness. It is easy to go to work with mild flue if you sit at a desk and talk on the phone. Try standing up and presenting to kids if you are only 50%.

 

There is no flexible time if you have lessons all day, it's show time all day.

 

I am not a teacher but I do some training.

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Obviously I don't want people to lose their jobs.

 

Why don't you?

 

Councils became bloated with made up jobs during the dark years of Labour rule. I feel sympathy towards those that will need to find alternative employment, but it's a good thing that we have government that is following it's ideological principles of cutting out bureacracy and trying to free working people from the taxation of funding a Socialist nanny state.

 

The more the Conservatives break apart everything Labour stands for the better IMO.

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I can also confirm that most of the cuts they've "revealed" this week were offered / made months ago. I know of 4 management staff above my grade in my direct chain who've gone (either now, in March this year or 2012), they offered voluntary redundancy to everyone in a grade who is on more than about £35k and the Dept Management Team of senior managers is about halved. As hamster said, E grade and above cuts are complete, and they've merged 3 departments in the past 18 months to reduce costs. For some reason IT is now in the same bit as property, culture, and recreation and heritage services.

 

As for Adult and Children's (Social) Services, they won't be replacing any social workers who leave, and as my wife got the boot 3 months ago (due to her sick record, seeing as she has a heart condition, which didn't stop her turning up for work for nearly 3 months whilst throwing up at her desk but they got rid of her anyway - coincidentally she was at the top of her pay scale and £4k better off than her colleagues). All of her colleagues were either offered reduced hours, let go if non-permanent, or (in 2 cases) are now pregnant so probably won't be coming back anyway. I can confirm they're minimising administrative staff too, under various spurious premises, and they've chopped a load of contractors and replaced them with permanent staff (eg unqualified Project Managers) who won't get the training to do the job properly because they're not paying for it any more, guaranteeing in-built inefficiencies for some time. Still, as there aren't many projects due to the low funding, they need to find something else to do.

 

The long and short of it is, whilst there are probably a lot of posts which can be trimmed, as an HCC employee, I've already taken a pay cut (removal of retention allowance), have a pay freeze for the next few years, have been forced to work at another office which has increased my travel costs significantly, had our household income nearly halved due to a redundancy, and will be expected to cover various other people's roles at a higher grade as they won't be there any more. Plus I can't get any useful training in my current role because they're not funding it, which makes me less skilled and less motivated personally.

 

Hard life...

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As said earlier the sickness record is somewhat unbelievable in Adult Services - ( My Ex Department) - with on average 17 days per year was the agreed figure some while ago via internal memos - if you consider that a huge wad of the staff were well - and I mean well above those 17days sick leave.

 

In response to some of the quotes in relation to my RCD episode - the supplier for HCC is its own internal company - its not like it was ever put out to tender unlike gardening / building and maintenance contracts where procurement comes into place - the majority of the operation is a joke - their is a culture of "jobs for the boys" people get promoted to senior positions without interview or advertisements being placed - the current mileage rate of 53.8 pence per mile has for years been bumped up often as a sweetener / lip service by the negotiations in relation to pay increases.

 

As previously stated - it is a shame that a lot of shopfloor hard working staff will suffer in what has already been termed "savage" cuts by some senior managers ( I still keep in touch) and surprise surprise pay off packages for the senior managers is not to sniffed at - it was already agreed some time ago that this would be the way forward ( I'm so pleased not have the usual "gagging order" in place) it was all costed that they would be paying vast amounts of money in the first 12 months to senior management in redundancy .

 

The plans for the first six months of 2011 will shock most people who are in need or require a service - the current "consultation" is yet another debating society / lip service when plans have already been agreed

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Qwerty - the RCD contract.

 

If HCC spends more than (approximately) £100,000 on those purchases over a four year period, they are obliged to put the contract out to tender notwithstanding that it's currently an in-house supplier. The in-house supplier has to compete with external suppliers.

 

Whilst the £100,000 threshold might have changed in the past 2 years (but not by much), it is EU Procurement Law and cannot be ignored.

 

If the spend is under the EU threshold, the council's own Standing Orders will dictate that the council still has to go to competitive quote.

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I had a letter the other day people.

 

 

It was telling me that unless I sign a new contract at the beginning of March, then I am officially unemployed.

 

These people are pushing people out before even discussing compensation for them. The Tax payer is going to foot the bill for all of this, do not be fooled.

 

I have never in my life been happier in a job than I am right now, people who know me will tell you just how much I love my job. I can't afford to work for nothing and this is virtually asking a lot of people to find somewhere else to work imho. It is a fact that an overwhelming majority of these people are women, women with young children, our wives, daughters and grandmothers. This is in both my personal and professional opinion disgustingly crass.

 

And I will promise you this, if this coming week ends how it has begun then I for one am out of there. I won't swear and cuss, but that is the long and short of my side of it. How come the directors have already received their com[ensation contracts. They aren't even actually leaving until March at the earliest. Still drawing their salaries. There is some serious pee taking going on somewhere.

 

grrrr

Edited by hamster
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