Bolton Council has spent less on making staff redundant over the most recent year than ever before since records began. The council made around 60 people redundant in the year leading up to March 2024, at a total cost of around £746,000. But leader Cllr Nick Peel says that despite recent cuts to the authority’s budget they have avoided making any of these redundancies’ compulsory.
Cllr Peel said: “We’ve always had a long stated policy of voluntary early severance and then moving staff around to fill vital positions, which has sustained us all throughout austerity.” He added: “Clearly this depends on people wanting to take voluntarily early severance and there is still a cost to be paid. Council all around the country have had to pay out on redundancies (Image: Newsquest) “But for us, voluntarily early severance has always been politically and morally preferable to compulsory redundancies.
“That is something we have always fought and will continue to do so.” Cllr Peel said that as far as he was aware no compulsory redundancies had been made by the council in recent times. This came despite around £11M worth of cuts having been agreed at Bolton Council's most recent budget meeting in February.
The figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government showed that each redundancy had cost Bolton Council an average of around £12,000 over 2023-24. But the total cost of £746,000 was down significantly from the total of £1.2M the year before an.