Jobs at risk as Reform to hire £5m consultants over savings

COUNCIL HOPES HIRED EXPERTS CAN FIND £19M TO £38M IN SAVINGS

- By EDDIE BISKNELL

A REFORM-run council is set to spend £5million on hiring private companies to investigate how it can save millions of pounds, including potential job cuts.

Derbyshire County Council will splash out millions of pounds on assessing potential changes which can be made to its operating model and a “large-scale transformation programme”.

Through this £5million, it is hoped that private firms, required due to the council's own lack of resource and expertise, can find between £19.2 million and £38.7 million in savings.

This will include “quantifying FTE (full-time equivalent) efficiencies.

Over the past three years alone, the county council has used £132.4 million from its rainy day reserves in order to reach balanced budgets, with the authority currently overseeing an annual spending budget of £770 million.

Council officials acknowledge the timing for a costly “transformation” may not seem right due to impending local government reorganisation - through which the county council will be scrapped, merged and readopted as either one or new councils but they said efficiencies needed to be looked at now for a better long-term future.

The council said: "Retaining the current model does not achieve the level of efficiency required to operate within the council's financial constraints.

"Postponing transformation risks exacerbating financial pressures and missing critical opportunities to enhance service delivery.