Shropshire Council has announced it will be ‘freezing’ all recruitment in order to ensure the authority stays within its budget.
The Conservative-run council is facing a budget gap of nearly £60m over the next five years.
Last January it offered all non-teaching staff the chance to take voluntary redundancy in the hope of saving £1m before March, and then £9m over the next two years.
Clive Wright, Shropshire Council’s chief executive, says the announcement of the new recruitment freeze is ‘part of our initiatives to operate within budget limits.’
‘This means that all posts to be recruited or replaced will now have to be approved by the relevant director and signed off by me,’ he said.
‘There will be some exceptions to this, for operational reasons, but again I will need to sign these off.’
‘We have operated recruitment freezes previously and I am pleased to say that managers were extremely diligent, and few inappropriate recruitment proposals came forward,’ he continued.
‘I am confident that this will also be the case during this current freeze.’
