Scottish Borders Council early retirement/voluntary severance scheme
Wednesday, May 14 2008
Scottish Borders Council has approved unanimously an early retirement/voluntary severance scheme aimed at helping the Council to make changes required to reduce core costs and improve its business.
Councillor Alec Nicol, Depute Leader of the Council, said: “In November last year, the Executive accepted that, in order to achieve the Council’s programme of business transformation and particularly the implementation of organisational reviews, we should agree a policy and procedure for reducing the number of employees through regular programmes of early retirement and voluntary severance.
“This will allow the organisation to become more efficient by reducing the overall staff numbers without having to resort to compulsory redundancies. Those programmes have now been approved unanimously by the full Council and, as a result, 51 Council employees are taking voluntary early retirement or voluntary severance over the next year or so.”
Leaving dates are subject to the operational needs of services, but the first employees in this group will finish work at the end of May.
There will be a one-off estimated cost of just over £2 million. For each and every year thereafter, there will be savings to the Council of just over £1 million. The costs of going ahead with the scheme will therefore be recovered within two years.
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