Saturday, February 06, 2010

Council to axe 1300 jobs while splashing out £193m

News just in on the saga about the new library and the perma-regeneration of Birmingham city centre.

While work on the controversial new 'Library of Birmingham' is finally underway in Centenary Square, new projects are coming in concerning the future of Paradise Circus and John Madin's Central Library.

For those interested in how the site may look like in the future, sketches by architect Glenn Howells for Argent developers will be on display at a public information exhibition which is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday at Paradise Forum.

In the meantime, the debate's heating up over the recent announcement that 1,300 Birmingham City Council staff are likely to be axed. The idea is to save £27.7m which, according to GMB union, will affect "frontline services", that is to say "mainly community day nurseries and youth services across the city".

This is big news, because exactly at the same time, as the Birmingham Post notes, "the council intends to borrow £135 million over 40 years, at a total cost of £300 million, to fund the [new library] project".

3 comments:

becky walsh said...

Thanks for linking to the GMB press release but you forgot to add that Brum City Council is currently run by a lethal Tory/LibDem coalition.

The whole thing is mistifying to say the least. The West Mids were hit the hardest by the recession and, as predicted, vanity projects are all the current local govmt can come up with.

Anonymous said...

1300 job cuts. There are 54,000 City Council staff. Its less than 2.5%. Sorry its belt tighten time.

You are also confusing revenue spend with capital spend.

Stan Moss said...

Yeah but it ain't you who's gonna end up on the dole, is it, anonymouse?

As for revenue spend etc: while in hard times companies typically turn to cost cutting measures such as layoffs, most analysts agree that this short term tactic creates little long term value, nor any long term sustainable savings.