Staff proud to work for the East Riding of Yorkshire Council

The East Riding of Yorkshire Council conducted its annual workforce survey in November 2010, the 2,769 responses showed a positive increase in some areas, notably in pride in working for the Council which has increased by 3% to 72%.

This is very positive if coupled with the attendance rates and average days lost to sickness falling to around 7.5 days per year, this despite the incidences of swine flu and other winter viruses, plus the bad weather. These figures are something the Council staff should be extremely proud of, and compare very well with most Local Authorities and other public services.

I think the East Riding of Yorkshire Council employees do a terrific job and are a credit to the Authority. The Council has placed itself in a stronger position than many other local authorities by anticipating and planning carefully for funding reductions before they were announced by the Government in December. The Council has been asked to find £30 million of savings over the next four years, but most importantly has already approved savings of £9.5million which will be achieved through projects to improve productivity and service delivery.

The budget approved by council will result in the reduction of up to 145 posts across the Council over the next two years although this will be lower through redeployment and retraining. This compares very favourably with our neighbouring authorities which in some cases are looking at four figure job losses.

What is particularly galling is the posturing and scare mongering of Goole’s Labour Coucillors in last week’s Goole Times when they ‘estimated a further 500 council jobs would have to be cut’ – SOMETHING THAT IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE. They have both had plenty of opportunities to raise this during the Council’s budget setting process and the last Council meeting, but failed to do so – in fact if I recall correctly the Leader of the Labour group complimented the Council on its strong financial position.

What the two Goole Labour Councillors should consider is the effect these untrue scare stories have on the moral of the Council employees and their families, and they should certainly not forget that it was their previous Labour Government that got us into this mess in the first place.