BCP Council to make job cuts to its 5,000-strong workforce

Around 120 job cuts could be made at BCP Council across a range of departments as the authority continues to reduce spending. 

In its budget plan for 2024/25, BCP Council has found £41m of further savings, efficiencies, and additional income generation required to correct the structural £30m deficit inherited from 2023/24. 

Speaking to media at a briefing on the budget, BCP Council’s portfolio holder for finance Cllr Mike Cox said: “At the moment there are 120 jobs that are threatened with compulsory redundancy. 

“But there is a voluntary redundancy process (VR) going on at the moment so that that may well add to that.” 

Cllr Mike Cox (Image: BCP Council)

Council chief executive Graham Farrant added there is scope to move people into different roles should people take voluntary redundancies. 

He said: “Some of those [redundancies] might be held by agency staff, some of them might be vacant, some of them will be permanent people. 

“[If they are] permanent people, what we do is try and redeploy them into other vacancies if we can and try and reduce our reliance on agency. 

“If people are coming forward for voluntary redundancy then that gives us an opportunity to take that job out if we can.” 

He added: “I don't like to say ‘this is definitely going to be X number of compulsory redundancies’ because we'll do everything we can to reduce compulsory redundancy by using vacancies, reducing agency and VR wherever we can.”

Graham Farrant, BCP Council chief executive (Image: Richard Crease)

BCP Council spent more than £630,000 making 21 people redundant in the year to March 2023, data from the Department for Levelling Up and Communities showed. 

The previous year saw 48 jobs axed at a cost of £2,203,000 and £2,948,000 the year before that. 

BCP Council said this week’s budget proposals for the next year would "provide a sound, stable financial future”. 

The budget also proposed a 4.99 per cent council tax rise, something which Cllr Mike Cox told the Echo was “easily justified”. 

He said: “Inflation's at over four per cent at the moment, the cost of services is going up even more [and] the government announced their increase in the national living wage. 

“That wipes out any increase in any council tax that we're going to get. 

“Virtually every other council in the country is going for a maximum increase as well, so we're no different from any other council.” 

He added: "The whole reason for this budget is to try and protect the most vulnerable and so those that are struggling will be giving us will be given assistance and as they always have done. 

“This enables us to continue that protection.”