Brent Council's Chief Executive recently circulated a letter saying that he wanted the Council to lose 250 posts by September this year. Given that the Council has a total of 3,000 employees, that is a pretty severe cut. It is tempting to see it as Brent Liberal Democrats implementing Nick Clegg's call for "savage cuts" in public services. If job losses on this scale do not lead to poorer quality services for Brent residents, then the Council must be seriously inefficent in its use of Council Taxpayers' money.
One of the things that always puzzles me about cost cuttting on Brent Council is that every time it happens we get told that the Council will get rid of agency staff. That makes sense as you have to pay extra to employ someone from an agency, and you don't have to pay so much to get rid of them. How then do we still have so many agency staff? The Chief Executive says we have about 500. How can this be if they are the first people we cut?
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