Accounts reveal redundancies cost council £16.4m

The figures were heard at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday

Staff who have left Shropshire Council in the last two years have received payouts totalling about £16.4m, a meeting has heard.

The figures were revealed by councillor Roger Evans, portfolio holder for finance, at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

He said during the 2023/24 financial year, 76 members of staff received a financial package and "encouragement to leave the council", at a cost of £3.5m. During 2024/25, 217 staff received a total of £12.9m after leaving the authority.

That makes the average payout £55,970 and Mr Evans confirmed 10 people had received more than £200,000 each.

"Part of the passover of the funding from last year involves £17m in reductions in 'rightsizing', as it is called," Mr Evans said.

Rightsizing refers to a method of making a business more efficient by changing the way it operates, including cost savings and redundancies.

Mr Evans went on to tell the meeting that following the cost cutting measures "Staff are telling me and other members around the table: 'We just can't operate now with the numbers of staff that are there'.

"One of the functions of the [improvement] board is to look at the staffing situation and to make alterations as is deemed necessary."

In July 2024, the authority - then run by the Conservatives - said it was looking to cut the equivalent of about 540 full-time posts, largely via voluntary redundancy and removing vacant positions.

It said this would save £27m.

Tanya Miles, the council's current interim chief executive, said it was not looking to make any more redundancies and is evaluating what is the minimum number of staff needed for essential operations.

"The Corporate Peer Report highlighted that there are some services in Shropshire Council that have become too small," she said.

"We're undertaking a number of essential benchmarking service reviews at the moment, in particular around finance, legal and our revenues and benefits teams.

"They are critical teams to ensure the functioning of Shropshire Council."

She said there would be some services that would need changing and modernising.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.