North Yorkshire County Council jobs to go in £100m crisis (From Gazette & Herald)

North Yorkshire County Council jobs to go in £100m crisis

11:16am Monday 26th July 2010 in News

THE chief executive of North Yorkshire County Council says redundancies are looming and frontline services will be hit because of the authority’s £100 million cash crisis.

Richard Flinton’s stark assessment of the financial situation facing the organisation comes as top officials try to make multi-million-pound cuts due to its Government grant being slashed.

He says it is the worst picture he has seen during his 20 years in local government. The council expects to have made £60 million in savings over the past six years at the end of 2010/11 and another £43 million is predicted to be needed by 2014/15.

“This is certainly the most challenging time I have ever known in my career in local government, but it is a challenge which I am determined the county council will rise to,” he said.

“However, frontline services will be affected and there will be some redundancies, although at this stage we do not know exactly how many. We are acutely aware of the human cost of people losing their jobs, and we will be doing all we can to reduce staffing levels without imposing compulsory redundancies.

“But we will have to make job losses if we are to cope with the anticipated drop in funding from central Govermment.”

Earlier this year, John Marsden, Mr Flinton’s predecessor, warned up to 500 jobs could be lost. Every department apart from education is the subject of a financial review, with libraries and bus services among the areas most at risk.