York council chief Kersten England facing the future in hard times

She hadn’t meant to start until October. But on September 30 last year (“my birthday!”) she spent the “whole day with the management team”. She takes that as the start of her tenure as chief executive.

She didn’t take long to make her mark. By October 9, the authority had revealed that about 200 council jobs were to be shed in a bid to save £15 million over three years. The new age of public-sector austerity was truly beginning to bite.

Then the council’s new boss took a bold step. In December, she announced that two of the council’s six highest-earning officials, all department directors, were to be axed.

A number of assistant directors’ jobs would go too, along with up to 34 other managerial posts, in a bid to save up to £1.6 million. A conscious decision had been taken to target the top jobs, so as to protect front-line services, Mrs England said.

It earned her high praise in this newspaper. “So often, when public bodies face the squeeze, it is front-line jobs and front-line services that get cut,” said an editorial. “Not any more…. this is one of the first decisions to have been made by Mrs England, and it is a courageous one.”

It still looks courageous today. But some of the sheen is taken off it by the revelation, in today’s Press, that while yes, the number of assistant director posts has been cut from 21 to 16 – and while it will be cut further, to 15, by 2012 – the remaining assistant directors will have their salaries increased by an average of almost £2,500 a year to compensate them for their additional workload.

There is something very public sector about that, I suggest when I meet her – you shed jobs on one hand, to save money, then increase the salaries of those left behind. She gives a pretty robust comeback.

Even after the assistant directors’ salaries have been increased – and that won’t happen until next April, and even then not until the decision has been reviewed and approved by councillors – the authority will still save more than £400,000 a year on assistant directors’ salaries alone, she says. And it’s not as though they don’t deserve their pay.

“Seventy-five per cent of assistant directors across the country are higher paid than ours in York. We have some fabulous senior managers, and they have to make very difficult decisions – about vulnerable and elderly people, about the safety of roads. We’re talking about jobs that have consequences.”

That said, she says she understands how people feel. That is why the council has deliberately decided to shed more senior management posts than front-line posts, and that is why there has been no cost-of-living increase for senior managers since 2008. She herself earns £130,000 – £15,000 less than her predecessor, Bill McCarthy.

All this talk about job cuts and salaries could hardly be more topical. Because, as we all know, public-sector organisations face years of unprecedented belt-tightening as the nation struggles to bring its debt under control.

On October 20, the new coalition Government will announce its spending review – a review widely expected to result in public spending cuts of between 25 to 40 per cent, and between 150,000 to 200,000 public-sector job losses nationwide.

Nationally, public-sector unions have already been in militant mood. If the cuts are as wide and as deep as many fear, the awful prospect of a winter (or spring) of discontent looms, with public-sector workers taking to the streets in defence of their jobs.

In Yorkshire, union leaders have been less bellicose. Chris Jenkinson, Unison’s regional organiser for local government in Yorkshire and the Humber, told this newspaper that local authorities could probably – if barely – manage to cope with cuts of less than 25 per cent over the next four years. Any more, however, and the effects would be catastrophic, he said.

So how deep will the cuts in York go?

Mrs England, like the rest of us, doesn’t know yet. But her authority has been preparing itself to make savings of about £50 million between now and April 2014 – equivalent to about 25 per cent of budget, she says.

That will be over and above the £4m already taken out of the council’s budget this year by the coali-tion Government.

She doesn’t know whether, come October 20, that expectation will prove right or wrong, or even whether there will be a requirement for certain areas of council expenditure to be protected over other areas.

If the cuts don’t rise above a certain percentage, she says, it may be possible to achieve them by doing things more efficiently. If they do go above a certain percentage, then there will need to be a real discussion about what people’s core priorities are.

There are lots of ways in which the council can seek to do things more effectively, at less cost.

They might include sharing some functions – such as IT, payroll, human resources – with other local authorities and even the police or local health services. And there may even be ways of sharing some front-line services, such as trading standards or development control.

The York community might also need to get involved in helping to maintain some services, Mrs England adds.

Some library services in North Yorkshire, for example, are provided by volunteers. “That’s not to say that that’s what we’re going to do, but we need to know what’s happening elsewhere and learn lessons from that.”

Parents and others could be involved in providing youth services, meanwhile, and volunteers could also help with maintaining local parks.

The council may also have to look long and hard at inviting private firms to run some services, if they can do so at a lower cost.

What kind of services? “I’m not ideological. There are companies that will provide almost everything,” she says. The council already has partnerships with private firms to provide highway maintenance, for example, and home care.

Any public companies that do tender for council contracts can expect to have to bargain hard, however. In the new, austere public economy, York will look to get the best value it can for every pound spent – as well as demanding quality.

And what about job cuts? How many council staff can expect to lose their jobs over the next few years?

She’s not going to be drawn on numbers – partly because it will all depend on that October 20 announcement. “(But) it is a matter of record that there are going to be reductions in a number of posts.”

Nothing anywhere near on the scale of what is happening in Birmingham, she stresses, where 26,000 people were recently told they were at risk of redundancy. And again, the aim will be to protect front-line jobs and front-line services. Every effort will be made to reduce jobs, where necessary, by voluntary redundancies, and redeployment of staff to other posts. There has, she points out, been a virtual recruitment freeze in place for some time now, with no new people being taken on.

All that being said, she accepts that while she hopes to avoid job losses on a large scale, there “will have to be redun-dancies”.

So how is that affecting morale? And what is the likelihood that we will before long see York council staff taking to the streets?

“Industrial relations have always been good in York, and we have a very good relationship with the GMB and Unison,” she says. “There are very tough times ahead, we know that, but we all understand the necessity of preserving core services to vulnerable people in the city.”

And morale?

“Morale is best where people feel they have the tools to do the job, and that they are delivering a good service,” she says. “If you visit Energise (the new sports centre at Oaklands), York Explore (the new-look central library) or people working with children, morale is extremely high.”

Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that as the cuts begin to bite, she can find some way of keeping it that way.

Causes for pride in record

There are many things she is proud of about her first year in office, says Kersten England.

They include planning approval being granted for the development of Terry’s; progress on the council’s new HQ at West Offices; the commitment -– with council support – to a new swimming pool and sports village at the university; the new Explore central library; and the fact that there is finally the prospect of the Barbican coming into use again, following the selection of SMG Europe as the preferred bidder to run the centre.

“The council has begun to put behind it it’s reputational issues,” she says.

She’s also immensely proud that the city’s children’s services were named amongst the ten best in the country – and of the success of the new York High School.

Its GCSE results were excellent, she says.

“It has been through really challenging times. It doesn’t serve the most affluent part of the city.

“But its kids do as well as or better than kids anywhere in the country,” she says.

Adding up at the council

City of York Council employs 11,800 people in total – or about 8,000, if you don’t include casual staff. Of these, about 3,700 work in schools. The council’s annual budget runs to about £117 million, with the city’s schools getting a further £90 million direct from central government.