Essex County Council to lose ICT staff to meet cut targets

Essex County Council is cutting ICT jobs as part of moves to modernise its information services and save £32m in costs.

The shrinkage is part of wider job shrinkage at the body; under its overall transformation programme to achieve £300m savings over four years as part of a programme using partner IBM, as many as 429 staff may eventually end up being made redundant.

"As part of our ambitious Essex Works: Customer First Transformation agenda, the Information Services Modernisation programme is set to deliver £32 million savings over the next five years through changing the way we deliver IT provision," said a spokesperson.

"This will require some reduction in the size of our IS team as well as changing the way ICT is used across the county. However, it is too early to provide specific details," the statement goes on.

The council's newly-installed CIO is David Wilde, who recently joined from Westminster City Council, so there is some speculation that the body may pursue more Cloud-based offerings, as Wilde is known to be in favour of that approach.

Essex aid that it had already saved half of its original £300m target through "smarter working".

But to find further savings, the council plans to cut jobs in its business support, corporate services, schools and education and youth service, as well as tech.

Essex will look to minimise the number of compulsory redundancies by reviewing temporary and agency posts, and using voluntary redundancy where appropriate, it claims.

"Essex County Council is no different to any other organisation that needs to get into shape if it is going to cope with these challenging economic times. Reduced budgets have had a direct impact on the county council's headcount and as such these changes have to be announced," noted Councillor David Finch, deputy leader and cabinet member responsible for the transformation programme.

The council currently has a 9,000 headcount, excluding school staff and says it got £40m less central funding this year and so has to find more savings this year.