Council can’t count the ‘substantial cost’ of school redundancies

Richard Evans, local democracy reporter

A cash strapped council says it is is unable to count the cost of making its school staff redundant with more job losses on the horizon, a committee heard.

Conwy ’s finance and resources overview and scrutiny committee today (Monday) heard how the council will face added, unknown costs because schools are having to make more redundancies.

Despite Conwy opting not to cut school budgets again for the next financial year in 2025-26, as they have for the last two consecutive years, “a number of schools” will still “have to make redundancies” to balance their budgets.

The debate took place whilst discussing the revenue budget for 2024/25 and the quarter-three monitoring report.

Redundancy process

Councillors at the meeting heard how schools were going through a redundancy process and the full cost of redundancy payments would not be known because it depended on the length of service, age, and pension of the member of staff.

Conwy’s head of finance Amanda Hughes explained.

“You will be aware from discussions on the budget and through discussions with schools that a number of schools will have to make redundancies, and that is predominantly because of either falling pupil numbers or a previous over-reliance on the use of balances and other changing positions in terms of grants,” she said.

“A number of schools, in order to balance their budgets for next year, will have to make redundancies, and that will come in, and you will have to obviously account for them once the obligation exists in the current year.”

She added: “I obviously don’t know what the exact costs of those redundancies are at the moment because those processes are obviously happening.

“Unfortunately, the cost is very dependent on the individual person’s level of service and their age, particularly in the context of whether there is pension strain. There is an obligation which is going to come through, which I can’t quantify.”

The report also stated: “The exact cost of redundancies varies significantly dependent upon the salary level of the post, the individual’s length of service, and their age.

“At this stage, the detail is unknown.

“The central education budget does hold a budget for redundancy costs and, certainly last year, was able to fully cover the costs incurred. It will not be clear whether or not that will be the case until the year end, but it is being flagged that there might be a substantial cost associated with these processes.”

‘A recurring feature’

Cllr Anne McCaffrey asked if school redundancies were now “a recurring feature” of the council’s budget process.

“I think we had 19 redundancies declared in schools in the last year, and I don’t think we had any or maybe a handful in terms of any other service (in the council). So I’m just wondering if again that is a recurring feature that redundancy is significantly affecting schools?”

Head of finance Ms Hughes responded: “I struggle a little bit in the sense that I understand why you rightfully want to see clarity with schools, and a lot of your questions often pursue this issue of why are we treating schools differently than the council, and I guess the reality of the situation is because the arrangements and the legislation around schools is different.

“So the schools have the power… the governors have the power to make decisions around setting their budget, which we don’t have a say in, and therefore, if they have made a decision to use balances in a previous year to balance their budget but those balances have run out, then that is going to lead to a potential redundancy situation in the current year if there are falling pupil numbers, etc, and that is outside of our control as a council.”

Cllr Anne McCaffrey then said the committee existed to scrutinise the council, who continually “misrepresented the schools’” position.

She added schools managed their own budgets, but this was considering the “predetermined slice of the pie” the council gave them and consequently they had tight budgets.

The committee agreed they had scrutinised the report, which will now go to cabinet.