LBWF CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan’s message to council staff: we are in a much more challenging financial position than we hoped we would be, so save money or else!
LBWF CEO Linzi Roberts-Egan has just circulated the following message to staff:
‘We are facing a significant budget deficit this year, with a £17million forecasted overspend. This is a much more challenging financial position than we hoped we would be in at this point in the year, and together we must all take immediate action to address it.
This will mean making difficult decisions over the coming months and will require a step-change from us all to reduce costs and think about how every pound is spent.
All teams across the Council are being asked to develop action plans to achieve additional in year saving targets, ensure that we live within our means and where possible come in under budget. The Senior Leadership Team are leading on action planning within their service areas, and you will hear more from them and your managers over the coming weeks.
Even if you do not directly manage a budget, there is a role for everyone to play in putting forward ideas for savings, identifying more efficient ways of working, stopping discretionary spend and identifying opportunities for income generation. Our conscientiousness and diligence will make a vital difference.
Across the Council we are continuing our drive to significantly reduce agency staff spend and asking managers to consider pausing recruitment on vacant posts as well as stopping spend on external consultancy and daily expenditure that isn’t essential. This will mean different things in different service areas, our collective and individual challenge is to stop and consider at every point of expenditure is this necessary, does this represent value for money, can this be delayed or delivered in another way?
If we are not able to achieve significant progress on our in-year financial position, we will have to introduce more stringent measures to control spend. This is something we all want to avoid, so please do everything you can within your own services and roles’.
Perhaps Ms. Roberts-Egan might begin her own consideration of ‘how every pound is spent’ by reflecting on the fact that the number of senior staff in the Town Hall earning over £70,000 p.a. (net of pension benefits) was 93 in 2021, 152 in 2022, and 160 in 2023 (handily, the figure for 2024 has not yet been announced).
She might even like to reflect on the fact that while in 2023 LBWF employed 437 senior staff, in 2015 it had somehow managed to make do with just 101.