Council protects children’s social workers from job cuts

Nottinghamshire Council has vowed to protect child protection social workers from job cuts over the next three years. The cuts will affect up to 3,000 other council posts.

Social workers, social work assistants and locality support assistants in the council’s children and young people department’s reception and assessment teams are being protected because of the difficulty of recruiting and retaining staff with the right skills, the council said.

But social workers in adults’ services teams will not be protected.

The council said rising demand for all social care services combined with cuts in central government grants meant it now had to deliver savings of £150m and cut nearly 3,000 jobs.

It had previously expected to axe only 1,000 jobs between 2010 and 2013 in a bid to make savings of £80m.

Council chief executive Mick Burrows said: “Unfortunately, it is inevitable that large scale reductions in staffing are required given that employee costs form a large part of our spending and the significant savings we need to make over the next few years.”

However, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis warned: “There is no doubt that job cuts on this scale will have a knock-on effect to vital local services.”

The council said it hoped most job losses would come from voluntary redundancies but has warned compulsory redundancies are inevitable.

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