Cheshire council to axe a third of IT staff

Cheshire councils plans to make a third of IT staff redundant in cost-cutting exercise

Almost a third of the IT staff at Cheshire councils face the grim prospect of redundancies this Christmas, as bean counters scrabble to shave £1.6m off the IT budget.

The shared IT service established by Cheshire West and Chester Council, along with Cheshire East Council, will begin consultation about the loss of 70 of its 217 IT staff in December, a spokesman for Cheshire East told Computing.

"A ring-fenced voluntary redundancy programme has already been introduced and the [councils] are asking for expressions of interest," he said.

The Information Communication Technology Service provides IT support for about 12,000 users, including council workers and schools. It oversees more than 5,000 servers situated across 600 sites.

The IT staff are based at five locations in Chester, Winsford, Crewe Macclesfield and Sandbach.

Last year, Andy Heys, the interim head of shared services at Cheshire County Council, told Computing that the establishment of a shared services arrangement had doubled productivity at the unit. At the time, the number of IT staff employed by the councils was cut from 420 to 220.

Heys left his position shortly after, in December 2010.

A spokeswoman for trade union Unison said their officials will be meeting later this week to discuss their response to the redundancy proposals.

Council finance officials are scheduled to meet on Friday to discuss the ongoing overspend at the ICTS, which has only managed to achieve £280k of efficiency savings this year, against a target of £539k. A further £1.6m must be cut from the budget next year.