Council Redundancy payouts not equall.

When Rhondda Cynon Taf announced it savage round of cuts which directly involved my village of Beddau , I called for the cuts to start at the top with a cul of senior executives.


However it seems that this will not save money at least in the short term.


Wales O reports that Wales' second biggest council gave five senior officers redundancy packages averaging £126,200 each during the last financial year,.

They say

Five unnamed top officers at Labour-controlled Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) council picked up £631,000 between them as the local authority sought to cut costs.

At the same time 140 lower paid staff were given pay offs totalling £646,000 – an average of just £4,614 each.

However 
Despite the redundancies, the council’s workforce rose from 12,444 to 12,458.

Worryingly this came to light when Pauline Jarman, leader of the opposition Plaid Cymru group on RCT council, uncovered the pay-outs in the authority’s annual statement of accounts.

She said: 

“I’m sure that people across the council area who see the level of pay-outs to highly paid officers will be staggered at their size.
“These figures show 140 staff received little more than five senior people which highlights the stark differences between those at the top and bottom.
“It may be that the VER (voluntary early retirement with redundancy) scheme needs to be adjusted because it may become unaffordable in the current financial climate. We would want it retained in some form so it is more generous than compulsory redundancy.
“It has to be better than the state provision, especially, as the people most at risk will be the frontline low paid who will not have much of a pension to rely on even if they have long service.
“I’m anxious to ensure those at the bottom of the pay scales such as dinner ladies or care workers don’t lose out. There needs to be discussions on this issue between the council, the trade unions and workforce.”

Overall, the council redundancy bill was £3,052,000 in 2012-13 for 192 staff. It followed a similar redundancy bill in the previous year of £2,761,000.

And yet the council workforce rose .

In theory it is the job that is made redundant  not the worker . So we need to know if the jobs that the top officer were doing have ceased to exist or has someone been given virtually the same job under a new name.

I don't want to see people lose their jobs and if they do I would like them to receive adequate composition.

But n these age of cuts it will probably to start trimming from the top .

What is not acceptable is that the fat cats on our council are given more of the cream than the rest of the workforce.even when they lose their homes.

Still it looks like that RCT have made it impossible to cut their Senior Executives without incurring financial cost which means there are no savings for a number of years.

Which explains why the council are going for easy targets like Beddau (and other ) Libraries .

Though the local councillors should beware  a local petition to Save Beddau Library keeps running out of pagesfor people to sign.

There supposed to be a consultation exercise and already Beddau clearly says No,