Camden should implement partial job freeze immediately

I spotted (the joys of twitter) some jobs currently being advertised on Camden Council's website.

These include:
- A head of engagement and research at £45-48,000
- A senior press officer at £35-38,000
- A senior committee clerk at £38-40,000
- An executive assistant at £35-38,000

These are among about 40 jobs being advertised at present including social workers, a deputy head teacher and a project manager for our new elderly persons homes.

Now it is quite often the case that the baroque titles given to some posts actually make them sound less sensible than they actually are. It's also true that some of these posts and others are on a fixed term basis. And of course councillors shouldn't try and micromanage the council's 7000 staff and management structures.

But all that having been said, I think given the scale of cutbacks now coming (and indeed already implicit in Labour's budget in the spring) that the Council should now implement a partial job freeze - covering all senior roles not directly providing service delivery (such as social workers). After all, there is likely to considerable restructuring coming to reduce posts in many areas, and this well necessitate redeployment of existing staff.

I know how hard most Camden staff work, and I realise that a job freeze in some areas will put more pressure on staff, and will necessitate a reduction in the quality/quantity of service that is delivered. But I just don't think we can justify recruiting to the posts I've highlighted above in the current situation.

I also would question whether we should really be hiring an executive assistant at that salary level.

I will be pursuing staff costs further at the full council tomorrow - Labour shows no signs so far of being aware of the scale of the fiscal challenge they face in Camden - especially as they have just increased their budget gap by £110m through their irresponsible, populist action on void home selloffs.

The press continues to focus on the very small number of council managers earning over £100,000. Of course we need to look at these salary levels very closely, and in our local manifesto we wanted to reduce the number of top staff at this salary level by 25%. But in fact, in terms of the overall salary bill, it's the much much larger number of staff on say £30-50,000 that really count. That's where we need to stop doing some things, and to do things more efficiently, and to keep taking out management layers. A lot has been done over the last four years but there's a lot more to do and the current financial crisis will require tough decisions.