Fears recruitment freeze at council could impact elderly in care homes

A money-saving recruitment freeze at Bristol City Council has caused fears that a lack of back-office staff and managers could affect elderly people in care homes.

Several vacancies will remain open across the council, in a bid to stop departments spending more than they have budgeted for. Social care, temporary housing, and improving education are predicted to have collectively spent millions over budget by March 2023. Frontline care home staff will be exempt from the freeze.

Social care, temporary housing, and improving education are predicted to have collectively spent millions over budget by March 2023.

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees faced questions about how recruitment controls could impact on vulnerable people who rely on council services, at a cabinet meeting on September 6. He then criticised Heather Mack, Green group leader and councillor for Lockleaze, and said the council couldn’t afford to “float off in the clouds” with its approach to budgeting.

As the council is forecasted to have spent millions more than it budgeted this year, bosses will take “mitigating actions” on some services.

Responding to councillor Mack’s questions on this, Rees suggested she receive more briefings on the council’s plans.

During a cabinet meeting on September 6, Rees said: “Your questions suggest you haven’t come to terms with the way the reserves actually work. I don’t want us to end up floating off in the clouds, thinking we’re going to sit around a campfire and come up with some kind of holistic view that has nothing to do with the financial responsibilities we have.”

By next March, the end of the financial year, the council is forecasting it will have spent £7.7m more than it budgeted for its general fund, as well as deficits of £1.4m on housing and £44.2m on schools. Capital spending, used mainly for big infrastructure projects rather than day-to-day bills, is forecasted to be underspent by £40.5m.

These forecasts change throughout the year and have already reduced from this summer. Council bosses in charge of department budgets, who are predicting they will spend more than they planned for, must tell finance chiefs how they set out to bring their spending back towards their budgets.

Departments spending more than their budget include social care, education improvement, digital transformation, and temporary accommodation for homeless people.

Heather Mack is a Green councillor for Lockleaze – photo: Bristol24/7

During the cabinet meeting, Mack asked how a recruitment freeze would affect elderly and disabled people in care homes, raising fears that they could “suffer unnecessarily”, and that the freeze could end up costing the council more in the long term. She added the council has a “huge chunk” more in its general reserves than is planned for.

She said: “We currently have a large amount in reserves, and I hope we’re asking about the future costs of these [mitigating] actions. A hiring freeze will seriously impact our services, and I’m especially concerned about adult social care.

“Reducing these services now while we have significant sums in reserves could make both people suffer unnecessarily and cost us more in years to come.

“Equally, cutting spending now on our response to the climate emergency will just make the actions that we need to reach carbon neutral by 2030 more expensive in future years. On transport, we are so far off delivering liveable neighbourhoods, cycling infrastructure, appropriate bus services and reducing car use.

Rees told a cabinet meeting: “I don’t want us to end up floating off in the clouds, thinking we’re going to sit around a campfire and come up with some kind of holistic view that has nothing to do with the financial responsibilities we have” – photo: Paul Gillis

Rees said: “The point of resilience is to look at the drivers of future shocks. Now those could be explosive shocks in the moment, like a flood, or they could be slow simmering shocks that build up over time, like a growing nag in society that comes out as a growing mental health crisis in our population. But these are all things that we’re grappling with all the time.

“It’s all very well having a ‘holistic worldview’, but stuff’s gotta get paid for. And it’s not that having an eye on balancing the budget and operating within our responsibilities is somehow lacking a holistic view. It just means that as a local government leader, you have to work in the world in which you have to return a balanced budget. There is no alternative.”

Main photo: Betty Woolerton

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