150 jobs face the axe at South Lanarkshire Council

ALMOST 150 middle-management jobs are set to be axed as part of a major cost-cutting initiative being considered by South Lanarkshire Council.

Departments will be restructured and backoffice teams merged if the proposals are approved.

And cultural services – the department that oversees libraries and museums – could become part of the trust that runs leisure facilities in South Lanarkshire.

Council chiefs expect the jobs cull to yield savings of £6m.

They say the shake-up is vital if the authority is to meet the very serious economic challenges caused by the credit crunch and banking crisis.

Details were given in reports tabled at last week’s meeting of the council’s executive committee.

Corporate resources director Robert McIlwain said: “The impact on funding of public authorities of the significant economic downturn and unprecedented levels of public debt as a result of the actions of the government to protect the financial sector, stimulate demand in the economy and limit the extent of the recessions means that we require to take forward a range of projects to reduce costs.

“The impact of this on the council is not yet fully clear but we do know that we will require to make levels of savings far in excess of those we have seen in the recent past.”

A team of officers met with departmental chiefs and trades union representatives to discuss plans for a new structure.

Seventeen management posts are set to go in school support services and four managers involved in regeneration face the axe.

Changes in the way ‘money matters’ and welfare advice sections are run are likely to lead to five job losses, and 10 housing department managers, with responsibility for property, could lose their jobs.

In the social work department, one ‘head of service’ and six ‘external managers’ could lose their posts as a result of the shake-up.

In total, 146.5 posts have been identified for the axe out of a council workforce of about 16,000.

Further structural savings are also being considered, as are the findings of a further review of the council’s operation by consultants Grant Thornton.

They have drawn up an “efficiency agenda” that involves exploring the possibility of outsourcing tasks or working in partnership with other agencies.

The consultants’ proposals and the plan to cut middle management posts will be further considered at next month’s executive committee meeting.

It is expected that the structural changes will take three years to implement and it’s hoped that the changes will be made through means of voluntary redundancy.