Bolton council spends more than £1m on redundancy packages

This comes with councils all over across the country having been forced to slash workforces due to budget cuts, according to the Local Government Association.

Andrea Egan, the Bolton-based president of public sector union Unison, says this is part of a wider issue of funding cuts affecting workers across all different sectors.

She said: “The first thing is recognising that when the council make these job cuts, they are services and people that are being diminished or reduced.

“But local authorities are not getting enough money from the government.

“And because of the last 12 years of austerity they are not recruiting staff because services are being reduced.”

Victoria Square, Bolton

The figures from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities figures showed that 89 people were laid off by Bolton council in 2021-22 at an average cost of £17,354 per person.

It meant the council paid a total of £1,544,501 in redundancies last year down from £2,596,740 the year before.

This was also below the £1,575,400 paid out in 2019-20, before the pandemic.

Bolton council spent 32 per cent less on redundancy packages than in 2014-15 when it let go of 131 employees at a total cost of £2.3million, despite payments typically being higher.

Ms Egan explained that the jobs that were being cut were also being lost, which is also why those positions were not being replaced.

She said: “It’s a stark reality, and as a result the government are reducing the money that is given to the councils to spend on services.      

“The community rely on supportive services, and when making cuts, they are the first services that go, not statutory.”                      

The cost and impact of budget cuts has been revealed One of the Unison president's biggest concerns was that agency workers were being brought in to fill the gap.

She said: “I would challenge the council on how much they are paying the agency staff.

“They are cutting services and having to bring in agency staff in to fill the gap.”

Across England, the total amount spent on redundancies fell for the fifth-successive year, from £250m in 2020-21 to £210m last year.

But more staff were laid off than the year before, with 9,744 compared to 9,454.

Andrew Western, chairman of the LGA's resources board, said councils have made layoffs in order to manage their budgets and avoid further pressure on taxpayers.

He said: "Without funding from the Government to meet the pressure of an accelerating National Living Wage on top of soaring energy and other costs, more redundancies are likely, exacerbating the capacity crisis that is already acute in some areas and impacting the delivery of services to the public."

A spokesperson for Bolton Council confirmed that none of the redundancies that were made in 2021/22 were compulsory.