Birmingham Council plans to cut 7,000 jobs

Birmingham Council is planning to cut 7,000 jobs over the next four years – reducing its workforce by more than a third – by a combination of redundancies and outsourcing.

Outlining cuts of more than £160m to the combined adults and children’s services budget by 2014-15, the council said its overall workforce across all departments would fall from 19,000 to 11,900 within the same period. The reduction includes a projected 3,000 jobs outsourced to social enterprises and co-operatives, and 3,700 through voluntary redundancy, early retirement, and “other redundancy”.

When asked whether social care workers would be affected by the job cuts, a spokesperson for Birmingham Council said: “There is no breakdown of the figures at this stage but, as the budget document explains, all council services are being reviewed.”

Birmingham Council announced plans in December to move adult social work outside of the authority by 2014 by transferring staff to a community enterprise.

The council also plans to restructure its children’s services teams with a greater focus on early intervention and use of the common assessment framework.

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