Welsh councils cut senior roles by 47% under joint working plans

While senior staff are working ever more closely together in two county boroughs, political and financial sovereignty will remain separate, a council boss has stressed.

At a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Governance and Audit committee on Monday, April 20, councillors and independent lay members were given a presentation by Steve Vickers the joint chief executive of Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen council’s on how the process of federating both authority’s is shaping up.

Mr Vickers told the committee that there had been a 47 per cent reduction in duplicating the senior staff at the “top table.”

Mr Vickers: said: “Alongside that we’ve completed a comprehensive review of leadership structures from tiers one to four and that helps us to clarify roles, stabilise the system, strengthen accountability and that work is about 80 per cent completed at this point.

“Members (councillors) have also taken the decision for a joint pay structure and that’s been implemented to support the joint roles and the lower tiers in both organisations have also been aligned.”

Cllr Haydn Trollope (Labour – Tredegar) said: “Where possible we work as a federation, but in all decision making we look at what’s best for this council and this residents.”

He asked for assurance that this was still the case?

Mr Vickers answered that councillors across “both councils” had made it clear that sovereignty “really did matter.”

Mr Vickers said: “Members are accountable and serve their constituents and they want to ensure they did that successfully.

“That was a consistent message.”

Federation is about working together “where it makes sense” and that councillors have been “crystal clear” that they serve their communities and it’s a “really important point to reinforce” explained Mr Vickers.

Independent member Martin Veale asked: “What sort of savings might emerge from the federated approach?”

Mr Vickers said: “We’ve been able to reduce the executive team functions by 47 per cent that is a huge efficiency – not all of that will be realised into savings because there’s not been a necessity to do so but what that means that it helps to balance the books or pushed down into the organisation to sustain services.

“A better way to think of that is that it helps us balance the books and preserve those front-line services.”

Mr Vickers continued: “Where it makes sense, we have brought services closer together, so we now have a joint head of adults (social services) and communities and joint heads of economy and place and neighbourhoods and environment.

“That’s started to work its way through the organisation where you’ll see more and more joint posts across the authorities – that’s how we push that resource to the front line.”

But some departments have been “deliberately” kept apart.

Mr Vickers said: “Both council’s had a degree of fragility in their education services and in children’s social services and as a result of that we felt it was safer and more prudent approach to keep them separate.

“That won’t change for the foreseeable future while we continue to stabilise those parts of the system and maintain the integrity of those structures.

Committee chairwoman and independent lay member, Cheryl Hucker said: “That’s been very helpful and informative, it’s really appreciated.”

She asked that the slides from the presentation are shared with committee members.

In July 2024, Torfaen agreed to share their chief executive Stephen Vickers with Blaenau Gwent, who became joint chief of both authorities on a trial basis.

In January 2025, it was agreed by councillors that the experiment was going well – and they decided to go ahead with proposals for closer working or “federation” take place between the workforces.

Since then Mr Vickers has been putting together a new senior management structure across both authorities.

Last May, Blaenau Gwent’s cabinet portfolios and scrutiny committee structure were changed to align with senior council staff responsibilities across both organisations.