Shared services is an expensive scheme (From Droitwich Advertiser)

Shared services is an expensive scheme

3:08pm Thursday 4th February 2010

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Your readers, judging by the number of letters published, are rightly concerned with the £45,000 that will be spent to determine ‘who sits where’ in the council chamber.

But much more serious money is currently being wasted by the reorganisation of the authority following the adoption of the ‘shared services’ policy with Redditch borough.

So far the following senior officers have left, one of whom had literally disappeared without his own staff knowing about it. Two senior directors on salaries in the region of £75,000 plus, one of whom was allegedly in the service of the council for a mere 18 months.

Others who left, within the last four weeks or so, include the head of human resources, the head of planning and the head of waste management.

These are very senior people who do not leave cheaply.

Their leaving financial packages have to include additional pension years made up on the local government scheme – a particularly generous one.

To this must be added at least three months salary in lieu of notice, any holiday entitlement not taken, as well as a discretionary ex-gratia payment depending on the age of the leaver. To my very conservative calculations we are looking at half a million pounds ‘departure’ money at least in total. The shared services scheme was sold to the councillors of both Bromsgrove and Redditch on the assumption of large and achievable savings over a number of years.

It is difficult to understand how these savings have been calculated when so much money is being paid out to get rid of staff. In a previous letter to The Advertiser, I mentioned the likelihood of further redundancy packages having to be paid by both authorities when the whole shared services idea is thrown out as soon as Labour gain control of Redditch borough. It looks as if the chickens have come home to roost a little earlier than expected.

Nick Psirides, Rubery

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