Highland Council Leader Corrects GMB Union On Wrong Statements Re Employee Numbers

13th March 2013

Leader explains Council job statistics.

The Leader of The Highland Council Councillor Drew Hendry is to write to the GMB trade union to tell them they have got the wrong end of the stick over job statistics.

The GMB issued a statement on Monday reporting that the fall in the number of staff employed by the Council - 2,900 between the first quarter of 2010 and the third quarter of 2012 – was the highest of any council in Scotland.

Councillor Hendry is concerned that the impression has been given that these jobs have been lost, whereas the large majority of staff have new employers as a result of services being delivered in a new and more effective way.

He said: “The fall in the number of staff employed by The Highland Council can be simply explained. The large majority of staff are still employed – they just have a different employer.

“In October 2011, the Council outsourced the delivery of culture, learning, sport, leisure health and wellbeing to charity, High Life Highland. More than 1000 staff transferred from the Council to High Life Highland.

“On 1 April, 2012, the Council entered into a partnership agreement with NHS Highland to integrate care services. A budget of £86 million transferred to NHS Highland for the delivery of adult care services. So 1,400 staff delivering, adult care services, including home carers, transferred to the employment of NHS Highland. At that time, staff employed by NHS Highland delivering children’s services transferred to the Council.

“Like every other Council in Scotland, we have significant savings to make and we are continually examining ways of delivering services more efficiently. We have been managing vacancies very closely to avoid job losses and we have a policy of no compulsory redundancies.”

The Council now has 8,673 FTE. Its revenue budget is £548 million; its capital spend is £73 million and it spends £43 million on housing maintenance, upgrades and new house building.