Portsmouth City and Fareham Borough councils spend almost £350,000 on redundancy payments for 28 staff members

Portsmouth City Council and Fareham Borough Council have spent £230,471 and £109,597 respectively laying off staff. These figures have come from the government’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The Local Government Association said workforce reductions are due to the cost of living crisis.

Andrew Western, chairman of the LGA's resources board, said: ‘Without funding from the government to meet the pressure of an accelerating National Living Wage on top of soaring energy and other costs, more redundancies are likely, exacerbating the capacity crisis that is already acute in some areas and impacting the delivery of services to the public.’

Figures show that 20 Portsmouth council staff were made redundant in 2021/22 at an average of £11,524 per person - down from £355,199 the year before.

Chris Ward, director of finance and resource for Portsmouth council said: ‘The redundancies in 2021/22 relate largely to reorganisation of council services in order to respond to changing demands, rather than budget cuts.

‘At this stage, it is not possible to say what the position will be for 22/23. This will depend on the government's response to the impact on the council and residents of the cost-of-living crisis.

‘The council is a member of several organisations that represent our interests, and constantly lobbies for additional funding for the increased demand for council services where costs have increased beyond the level of funding received.’

Eight Fareham council staff members were laid off last year, up from £38,142 in 2020/21.

Councillor Sean Woodward, leader of Fareham Borough Council said councils do reorganise and restructure to ultimately save money.

'The cost of redundancy is generally recovered extremely rapidly and then you show a surplus,' he said.

‘We spend over £18m a year on staff salaries to put in some perspective so obviously, it is a tiny proportion of that which is a one-off cost which is then recovered over the next two or three years.

‘We have not reduced services but we are always looking for efficiencies in terms of headcount.’