By Rachel Charman
The chief executive of Southend Borough Council Rob Tinlin anticipates that there will be around 300 job cuts at the council in the next five years.
Mr Tinlin told BBC News today that due to public spending cuts, Southend Council’s central government grant will fall by 8% in real terms after 2011.
Mr Tinlin said that this means the council will “have to start taking some difficult decisions, because we can’t squeeze everything out of continuing efficiencies.”
Mr Tinlin went on to predict that Essex councils will work together to reduce costs.
He said: “Some of what we need to do is to start working far more closely with our neighbouring authorities so that we deliver joint services.
“You get the same bin lorries doing runs for us, Rochford, Castle Point, Basildon, Southend.
“Or we deliver our telephone services or our revenues and benefits services jointly with other local authorities.”
In order to combat the cut in central government funding, Southend Borough Council aims to put in place a transformation programme.
Head of Finance and Resources at the council Martin Hone explained this programme.
He said: “It’s a further investment in new technology and a further investment in staff flexibility; what we refer to as new ways of working.
“If we area able to deliver all our plans… we will be able to take a further £15m out of our budget in efficiencies… [whilst] at the same time improving the quality of the services we deliver.
“We’ve not budgeted for next year any money for redundancy costs, but we have budgeted for retraining staff.
“So we’re managing vacancies, we’re looking at how, if we need to reduce staff in one area, we can put them into a talent pool to retrain them to do something else.”
