Sit tight on potential job cuts, says Chamber
Derbyshire must not “overreact” to the prospect of 2,000 jobs being axed from the region’s public sector. That’s the view of Scott Knowles, deputy chief executive of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce. He told Insider that Derbyshire needs to “rebalance itself towards exports, manufacturing and innovation”. The potential job cuts – to be phased over four years – were announced as the county council prepared to make £94m of savings over the next four years.
Knowles said: “It is important that we don’t overreact to this announcement until the full details are known in December. Whilst the estimated figure of 2,000 job losses may seem high, these will be phased over four years and natural turnover and retirement will hopefully reduce the amount of compulsory redundancies required quite significantly.”
The government announced it would axe 28 per cent of the council’s grant, meaning the authority would have to cuts its spending by £84m over the four years from April 2011. That's in addition to the £10m the council has been told to save this year.
The final figure “will not be clear until the government grant settlement is announced in early December”, said the council.
However, the authority said it anticipated up to 2,000 council job losses over the next four years.
Council leader Andrew Lewer said: “We don’t want to speculate or scaremonger and must wait until we know exactly how we will be affected.
“Unfortunately, we won’t be at the point for some time. We’re still waiting for final information on government grant and assessing inflation. Council tax levels also still have to be determined.
“Only then will we be able to work out the full impact on jobs and services and provide a detailed breakdown of what it all means.”
Knowles said Derbyshire was still in a strong position, and added the private sector was “still seeing plenty of economic activity”.
He said: “We are in Derbyshire, with companies continuing to recruit against a backdrop of spending cuts. However, this announcement provides stark evidence of how the cutbacks in public expenditure announced since the election are starting to bite, so we must proceed with caution.
“The economy needs to rebalance itself towards exports, manufacturing and innovation in order to secure and sustain the recovery and whilst there are bound to be some local business impacts resulting from this announcement, there are also opportunities for the private sector to exploit, which will help to stimulate growth and encourage job creation.”
