Purpose

As part of the budget setting process for 2023/24, DCLT were asked to review operational overheads to achieve revenue efficiencies to enable the council to reduce the additional management fee which had been established post COVID-19. The Trust pursued this under the ETO framework and identified 10 posts that could be removed from the structure through improvements in digital process and organisational workloads.
This covered the support service areas of Marketing, Facilities, IT and Administration. DCLT Board approval and Trade Union consultation took place and subsequently the posts were placed at risk of redundancy, as no longer required in the organisation.
Through consultation it was identified that while opportunities in the front of house/operations areas were available, staff were not comfortable being retrained and redeployed and entered into redundancy talks, with all 10 staff members leaving the organisation.
The cost of redundancy for the 10 posts is £145k, which will achieve annual revenue savings of £256k. This saving has been included in the 2023/24 revenue budget for DCLT and has helped the Council to reduce the value of the additional management fee approved in its 2023/24 budget.

Decision

To pay DCLT £145k to meet the redundancy costs of a restructure that will release annual savings of £256k, and to fund the payment from the severance costs earmarked reserve.

Alternative options considered

ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS CONSIDERED AND REJECTED
To not make the payment. The monthly review of DCLT’s finances suggests DCLT have no other way of funding the redundancies. For City of Doncaster Council (CDC) not to fund the redundancies would not make financial sense as it is in CDC’s interest to achieve the revenue savings of £256k