Kirklees Council announces 750 roles will be made redundant as it looks to cut nearly £50million from its budget

An email, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), was sent to council staff from chief executive Jacqui Gedman informing them of the council’s plans to make hundreds of roles redundant.

The email first sets out the bleak state of the council’s finances. It explains that financial pressures stemming from the cost of living crisis saw the local authority spend £27million over budget in the last financial year.

It continues to outline that a HR1 notice – a legal requirement when more than 20 redundancies are to be made across an organisation – will be submitted by the council by the end of the month.

The figure given for the number of redundancies is 750 and is calculated based on current financial pressures, though it is explained this may not be the final number.

The email reads: “Over the next few weeks, the council will issue what is known as a ‘HR1 notice.’ We informed the trade unions of our intention to issue the notice earlier this week.

“A HR1 notice is a redundancy notification and it is a legal requirement if an organisation believes it may have twenty or more proposed redundancies. It is required even if you are not clear of the actual number of redundancies but anticipate that the size of the service change may result in redundancy.

"The HR1 form will be submitted by the end of July and the number of redundancies within the HR1 will be listed as 750.

“It is important to understand that this does not mean that there will definitely be 750 roles made redundant.

"It means that, based on the current budget proposals for 2023/24 and 2024/25, this is a number we feel is appropriate given the financial pressures we face.

“At this stage we do not have a full breakdown of the directorates and roles impacted or the timings and we will, of course, be working with trade union colleagues to do everything we can to avoid compulsory redundancies.

“A council-wide programme of voluntary redundancy is not being considered as we try to balance the delivery of key services, skills required for the future and affordability.”

The council’s difficult financial position was outlined by the chief executive at the beginning of the email.

She said: “We’ve been able to make savings in budgets across the organisation, as well as using the council’s reserves, to make up for the increased costs for this year.

“But I need to be open with you, the challenges for the next financial year are more severe.

"Our current projections show that the council needs to make further savings of around £47million to achieve a balanced budget next year. That’s roughly 13 per cent of our overall net day-to-day spending.

“Together, we’ve already taken action to reduce our costs and bring our budget into balance. Recruitment to many posts has been frozen, we’ve made progress on using our buildings more efficiently and we’ve stopped many kinds of expenditure that aren’t absolutely essential.

"I want to thank everyone who has already contributed to those efforts. They have not been easy for many of you.

"But if we are going to set a balanced budget for the next financial year, we need to make further savings across the organisation.

“Over the coming months, we will be bringing forward proposals to achieve the savings we need to make. That will mean changes to some services, new ways of bringing in income to the council and measures that prioritise our activities even further.

"But the scale of the challenge means that some jobs will be affected.”

A Kirklees Council spokesperson said: “The cost-of-living crisis and ongoing economic challenges have put pressure on council budgets across the country.

"We are already reducing costs across the council but we know further savings will be required over the coming months.

"Publishing an HR1 notice is an early signal that we will need to make redundancies if we are going to deliver our legal obligation to set a balanced budget for the next financial year.

“Our focus will be to try and avoid or reduce the number of compulsory redundancies and support our staff through the changes.

"We will balance that aim with our delivery of key services and ensuring we retain the skills we require to continue to deliver the best services for Kirklees residents.”