Surrey Lib Dems demand action on Frontline Vacancies

Surrey County Council Liberal Democrats have called on the ruling Conservative administration to urgently prioritize filling vacancies to front-line services in what group leader Cllr Hazel Watson said was a clear case of the Council "taking its eye off the ball". Nearly two years on from SCC's Business Delivery Review (BDR) which was supposed to result in a "Council fit for purpose" with the right workforce to deliver those services, front-line services are still short on essential staff according to the Liberal Democrats.

Said Cllr Watson: "Surrey County Council paid consultants over £1.4 million to advise on the BDR and spent £8.6 million on redundancy costs. It appears that this money was wasted. Some of the services have been reorganized and re-reorganized and the work under BDR to decide the number of staff that the County Council needs to provide its services has proved to be wrong. The Council is allowing the number of back office positions to increase and at the same time, is not doing enough to fill front line vacancies where staff are really needed to provide services to the public such as social workers. These posts are either left unfilled which detracts from the service or they are filled with expensive agency staff that puts pressure on the budget."

According to the Conservative Executive's own report of November 20th, the number of posts in this financial year has increased from 8063 in the original budget to 8483. This is an increase of about 400 posts or 5% in six months!

When the County Council discussed the BDR proposals in April 2006, the Liberal Democrats opposed them and said that in some cases posts were being removed but it was unclear who would carry out the necessary work to deliver the required services following the re-organization.

Said Cllr Watson: "Only six months ago, the Executive reassured the County Council that a workforce plan was in place; however the figures and the recent reactive proposal agreed by the Executive that the County Council should simply delete posts when they are unfilled for more than six months shows that, either the Council does not have the right workforce plan or that its plan is not being properly implemented."