100 Doncaster council workers set to lose their jobs in latest wave of cuts

Mayor of Doncaster, Ros Jones, announced last week that the council will need to cut £31 million over the next financial year – which equates to £105 being slashed for every man, woman and child in the borough.

Doncaster Council has now confirmed it is set to eliminate around 100 posts as part of the proposals, which will go before full council in March.

The budget report states the council will look to make staffing cuts through measures such as the reduction of day care back office support, of senior management posts and by minimising social care staffing costs by recruiting to permanent posts and thereby slashing agency costs.

Mayor Jones said: “Unfortunately there is no getting away from the fact that government cuts to council budgets means a reduction in the number of staff who provide important public services.

“ We have worked hard to limit the number of people affected and look at all avenues such as redeployment and deleting vacant posts, before offering voluntary early retirement or redundancy.

“Compulsory redundancy is always the last resort.”

Coun Jonathan Wood, deputy chairman of the Doncaster Conservatives, has questioned whether the planned council job cuts are ‘necessary’.

He continued by saying the Conservatives would have avoided making job cuts if they had set this year’s budget.

“Job cuts are always a last resort, and something I think we would have been able to avoid,” he added.

“In this age it is not unacceptable to ask councils to manage budgets – especially when we had a Labour council in Doncaster that always spent beyond their means for so many years – but I think Ros Jones has got her priorities wrong.

“Yes, it’s great that she’s investing money in regeneration projects, but it shouldn’t be at the same time as the most vulnerable in Doncaster are seeing their services cut like with the care homes. We should have held on to them.

“She keeps saying they weren’t privatised but private companies own them now, and the staff were either made redundant or are now employed by them.

“If it sounds like privatisation, and smells like privatisation – then it’s probably privatisation.”