Nearly 70 jobs under threat in Highland Council spending plans
The local authority could put up council tax by 3%
Last updated 10th Feb 2017
Nearly 70 jobs are under threat as part of Highland Council's spending plans for the next year.
The budget proposals, which will be decided on by councillors next week, also include a move to increase council tax by 3%.
The local authority needs to bridge a budget gap of £10million, which could mean some cuts to services.
Budget Leader Cllr Bill Fernie said: “We have looked carefully at all the savings and have done our best to reduce savings where we can to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities. This means that we can significantly reduce the savings which were originally proposed for Childcare and Early Learning. Also, some of the cuts to the £4 million funding which goes to third sector groups, will now not be taken. We have also significantly reduced the planned cut to adult services.
“£20 million is still a huge amount to take out of our budget, but we are trying our best to mitigate the impact of these savings on communities and on our staff.
“The level of staffing reductions required is considerably lower than the amount anticipated during the earlier stages of the budget process. This is due to the reduced budget gap as a result of changes in the grant funding settlement and we have sought to minimise the impact on staffing by focusing the savings proposals on areas of non-pay and income budgets.
“Of the posts affected by our final savings proposals, a significant number are already vacant. Many of the posts relating to savings approved in prior years have already been deleted.
“Significant consultation has taken place with Trade Unions and a workforce management strategy including the use of recruitment controls and the reduced use of agency staff has been introduced in order to identify opportunities for the redeployment of staff at risk and to reduce the need for compulsory redundancies.”