Rotherham Council: Workers challenged to accept less pay to save jobs

The Labour-led authority hopes it can avoid widespread job losses and closures of local facilities by asking all employees to accept cuts in salary equivalent to three days per year for the next two years.

Negotiations with unions are ongoing, and the council says no final decisions have yet been made. But the authority says a successful conclusion will save £3m in further cuts and prevent 130 jobs being lost – on top of the 280 announced so far.

Regardless of the outcome, many millions will still have to be cut from services over the coming year, though no major closures of public facilities have been announced so far.

The look of the town is likely to deteriorate significantly, however, as the council cuts spending on street-cleaning and related services.

One mechanical sweeper will be ditched altogether, along with one of Rotherham’s two fly-tipping clean-up teams. There will be less weed-killing on highways, less litter-picking and less cleaning of graffiti.

Grass will be cut less often on roadside verges as the council “adopts a flexible approach to cutting frequencies”.

Garden waste collections will stop during the winter months, and charges introduced for new or replacement rubbish bins.

Services for young people will also suffer, with the team which assesses youngsters with special educational needs set to be hit with a massive budget reduction totalling £1m by 2014.

Spending on other youth services is to be cut by more than half a million pounds over the next two years, though it is not yet clear upon exactly which youth programmes the axe is set to fall.

A further £500,000 will be cut from the council’s ‘school effectiveness service’, which was set up to raise standards in Rotherham’s struggling schools.

Massive savings totalling £1.5m will be made from the council’s social care budget when its warden and home care services are merged, though the authority insists the vulnerable people relying on these services will not suffer as a result.

A similar amount will be saved by transferring some social care services over to the local NHS trust – though again the council says residents will not be hit with actual front-line service cuts.

But budgets for people in need of high-dependency care will definitely be reduced.