Coventry City Council has announced it expects to make 1,000 staff redundant as part of efforts to save £60m by 2018.
The local authority has already lost 1,000 employees since 2010 but said the need to find further savings had led to the proposal, which will be discussed by the council’s cabinet on August 5.
If it is approved, a new voluntary redundancy and early retirement scheme will be launched in September. It will not be open to ‘high priority’ posts including social workers and refuse collectors.
‘The worst is yet to come in terms of us identifying and delivering more savings,’ said Cllr Damian Gannon, cabinet member for strategic finance and resources said.
‘We are going to have to make some tough decisions over the coming months about the services we deliver to Coventry residents.
‘There’s no doubt we will be a smaller organisation in the future and will be delivering fewer services with fewer employees. It makes sense to offer voluntary redundancy or early retirement to people who want to leave the organisation now. We want to minimise the need for compulsory redundancies.
‘We will be reviewing management roles across the organisation and, where we can, taking out more levels of management and removing senior posts. We need to look at all levels of management from the highest level downwards and remove highly paid posts where we can. This will help us protect the frontline services we know Coventry residents really value.’
