Union says 'no evidence' of council overstaffing

Dave Ratchford of Unison says claims of overstaffing are "outlandish"

The idea Derbyshire County Council is overstaffed should be treated the same as outlandish conspiracy theories, according to a senior Union official.

Unison, which represents many local government workers, has criticised proposals to cut 2,000 staff at the authority.

Dave Ratchford, Unison's regional organiser for Derbyshire, said: "We have asked repeatedly for the evidence supporting what are some fairly outlandish and superficial claims but we haven't had any evidence whatsoever provided to us."

On Thursday, Derbyshire's Reform UK leader Alan Graves told BBC Radio Derby the authority was "not an efficient council" and repeated his aim to cut a fifth of the 10,000 staff.

In response, Mr Ratchford said: "At the moment, we have zero evidence and so therefore we've got no choice but to consign it to the same folder as the flat Earth theory and the faked moon landings.

"Until we can see the evidence, we can't possibly move forward on this.

"It's going to have a devastating effect on the services that the county council are obliged to provide.

"This is the fabric of our communities that we're talking about, and it really boils down to what kind of Derbyshire do people want to live in?"

Unison believes the best way for councils to save money is to bring social care services back in house, rather than having them run by private companies.

Alan Graves said council staff should not fear Reform UK

Graves told staff they shouldn't fear compulsory redundancies and job losses would be through natural wastage.

However Mr Ratchford said that would add to an extremely pressured situation.

"We've just seen the special educational needs function criticised by Ofsted. It's working at something like 60% capacity. It's vastly, vastly overstretched."

Alex Dale, leader of the opposition Conservative group which ran the council between 2017 and 2025, accused Reform UK of lacking ideas of its own.

"We would agree the council needs to be more efficient and we were taking the neccessary steps," he said.

"Essentially all we've heard is that they're continuing our programme to try and make the council more efficient.

"They talked a lot about Doge [Department of Government Efficiency] before the election and we've kept asking questions about what that really means - a practical example - and we've heard nothing."