Sutton Council had ‘no choice’ but to offer its entire workforce voluntary redundancy to fill a huge hole in its budget.

The council blamed cuts in central government funding for the offer sent to its 1,500 staff, saying it had to save £31m from its annual budget by 2019.

It is not the first council to make the dramatic offer.

From Friday: Cash-strapped Croydon Council offers redundancy to entire workforce

The document sent to all staff on November 6 said: "The London Borough of Sutton has taken a decision to run with a council-wide invitation to all staff (with certain exemptions) to express an interest in voluntary redundancy.

"This scheme forms part of a number of measures to enable the council to respond to the need to reduce the level of its workforce.

"Where the council is already undertaking a reorganisation or change programme that affects a group of staff, we are also welcoming volunteers for redundancy in these situations even if they have not been identified as vulnerable to redundancy."

Employees exempt from the offer include social workers, school staff and all department heads.

Liberal Democrat councillor Richard Clifton, lead member on human resources said: "To achieve this we have no option but to change the structure of the council along with changing, reducing and stopping many of the services we offer.

"This process must continue if we are to change in order to make the most of the money we have and continue to provide essential services.

"There may be a need for compulsory redundancies as we review all of our services, once again, to meet the future financial challenge."

Since 2010 the number of directly-employed council staff has reduced by 607 full-time posts from 2,095 to 1,488, saving the council £14.2m.

The council would review any offers of voluntary redundancy before making a decision whether to let individuals from various departments go to make sure it was still able to run services for residents.

Conservative leader Councillor Tim Crowley said: "I’m a bit concerned that the council is going to end up with too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

"They will have lots of people on very high paid remunerations protecting their own jobs and not enough people to do the work."

Unison Greater London area organiser Colin Britnell said: "Clearly voluntary redundancy is better than compulsory redundancy.

"Our concern is that there are certain exemptions, there are a lot of staff that wouldn’t be eligible to apply for voluntary redundancy and the fear would be that there are staff who would like to take advantage of voluntary redundancy but are refused permission to do so.

"It is risky for them in the sense that it is not tied into a service redesign and that is why it is voluntary because clearly they have the right to refuse any requests if particular individuals want to go that they still need.”

The redundancy scheme comes at a time when the council is consulting on proposals to cut children’s centres, youth centres and libraries as part of its cost cutting measures.

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