The reorganisation of staff at North Yorkshire Council is going to continue to cause uncertainty for another six months according to one local councillor.
Filey councillor Sam Cross says the massive structural changes bought about by the merger of eight North Yorkshire councils in April is still not complete.
The eight authorities previously providing district and county level services were replaced by the unitary North Yorkshire Council earlier this year in the biggest shake up of local government in the area since 1974.
Councillor Cross says the staff restructuring is causing uncertainty for council officers as they move to new structures and roles and as management changes take place. Councillor Cross also thinks the need for new authority to make savings of £70m is also going to impact services.
The council said last month that a multi-million pound deficit in the council’s budget is being covered for the first year through the one-off use of reserves, after some additional savings have also been made. In the longer term, the financial gap is expected to widen and will need to be met by additional savings.
A masterplan is now being pulled together to maximise millions of pounds in savings across North Yorkshire Council to help counter the unprecedented financial challenges. The plan to introduce the savings needs to be set out by February next year to ensure that the new authority does not have to continue to rely on cash reserves to balance its books.
During the second year of the new council’s operation, it is estimated that there will be a further shortfall of £30 million, with another annual deficit of £45 million predicted in the third year. Unless savings can be found, a total of £105 million will be needed to be used from the council’s reserves over the next three years.
The council says the shortfall in it's budget has been caused by a series of factors, such as the high rate of inflation, issues surrounding supply chains and rising staffing costs as well as the aftershock of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, the opportunity to streamline the way in which key services ranging from waste and recycling to education, highways and planning are delivered to nearly 33,000 businesses and the 615,000 residents in North Yorkshire is seen as essential to helping to tackle the growing demands on the new council’s finances.
By joining up services and maximising spending power, North Yorkshire Council says it hopes to recoup between £30 million and £70 million, which will become annual savings. The scale of the new council’s operations will see it have an overall spend of about £1.4 billion, including £343 million on schools.
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