Council sells off buildings to fund redundancies
CASH-STRAPPED Hillingdon Council has sold off property valued at nearly £20 million to help foot the bill of making their own staff redundant.
Between 2014 and 2018 the west London local authority sold 45 sites for more than £19,127,764 and made 462 people redundant in the same time period.
The local government funding crisis has become so dire that councils are being forced to sell thousands of public spaces and assets.
Hillingdon brought in £7.5m selling off land in South Ruislip to housing developer Clearview Homes Ltd and began handing schools, such as Ruislip High School and Hillingdon Primary School, to various trusts in a bid to balance the books.
In a double blow to communities, Hillingdon used some of the money raised from selling off land in the London suburb to pay for hundreds of redundancies, including in vital frontline services.
“It comes as no surprise that the council has been selling off assets to pay for staff redundancies,” said Peter Curling, leader of the council’s Labour opposition.
“It is clear that the council have failed to think ahead and prepare for difficult economic times, mostly brought on by this government slashing council funding.
“It is children, elderly people, and other local groups that are los- ing their premises to carry out their activity due to the council selling off buildings and land.”
Previously, money made from selling public assets could only be used to fund the cost of buying new ones.
However, in April 2016, the then Chancellor George Osborne relaxed the rules to allow local authorities to spend the proceeds on cost-cutting measures, such as sharing back-office functions with other authorities, investing in new technology or other reforms which have upfront costs but reduce spending in the longterm.
Freedom of Information requests submitted found 64 councils in England have spent a total of £381m made from property sales using the new freedom since the policy came into effect.
Almost a third of that – £115m – was spent on making people redundant.
A Hillingdon Council spokesperson said: “From April 1 2016, all councils were given permission by the Secretary of State to use capital receipts to fund transformation projects, including projects where redundancies are made, as part of efforts to streamline services and provide better value for taxpayers’ money on an ongoing basis. “This is common practice, with £236m of transformation costs charged to receipts nationally across 2016/17 and 2017/18. This is audited each year. “Where a redundancy does not lead to ongoing savings, we fund it from earmarked reserves. “Thanks to sound financial management, we have not had a high number of redundancies compared with other councils. In fact, with around 35,000 redundancies made across the 32 London boroughs since 2010, Hillingdon is below the average, and the redundancies we have made have been driven by our commitment to work more efficiently while focusing on the frontline services our residents value. “The Residents Services directorate accounts for more than half of our workforce and includes many support services, so redundancies in that area are bound to be proportionately higher. “As we have not made 20 or more employees redundant in any one department within any 90-day period, we have not needed to notify the GMB under section 108 rules. “However, we have consulted them and the other trade unions on every restructure and redundancy.”
It comes as no surprise that the council has been selling off assets to pay for staff redundancies