Dumfries & Galloway Council to lose five senior managers in streamlining exercise

The first practical steps in a radical streamlining of management at Dumfries and Galloway Council were agreed by Full Council on Thursday.

This has resulted in the voluntary early retirals of five Chief Officers and these senior management jobs will go from 1 April 2011. This allows further restructuring to take place.

The deleted posts are :

Director Support Services

Director Economic Regeneration

Area Manager Annandale and Eskdale

Area Manager Nithsdale

Group Manager Business Support Education and Social Work Services

Chief Executive, Gavin Stevenson explains:

“We have completely revised the early retiral process to ensure fairness and transparency for all staff. All decisions throughout the organisation are based on a business case that shows the full costs of deleting a post. In these five cases there is a total saving to the Council of £ half a million a year from next financial year, that can be part of the budget development process.”

As required by regulation, the business case also shows the full employment costs to the Council if staff had continued to work till age 65. This figure is known as the net capitalised savings and is £3,521,238 for these posts.

He added:

“Council agreed at the end of June to refocus the central support services that are essential to making the organisation work. The aim is to create a flatter and more flexible management structure and a culture of innovation. What is clear in this financial climate is that we cannot continue just to do the same things a bit differently. We have to do different things. These changes will help redesign front line services and retain services for our communities.

In the revised management structure, senior managers will have increased responsibilities and accountabilities and there will be fewer of them. The need to cut costs has increased the pace of change but not the direction and this was supported in the recent extensive public consultation. Clearly, the early retirement scheme creates opportunities for change and it is an important principle that this begins at the top and cascades down.

Practically this means a big loss of skill and experience to the organisation which we will have to work hard to replace and I’d like to pay tribute to the huge contribution that these staff have made to public service over the last 30 years or so.”

The early retirement of Chief Officers requires a committee decision.