Nearly 500 Cumbria County Council staff applied for voluntary redundancy in a scramble to beat a government payouts cap.

Officials at the authority say that only 425 of the 470 who applied in the latest applications process were eligible for voluntary redundancy - and of these 71 have been told they can go.

The departures are part of a huge ongoing effort to trim slash costs at the cash-strapped authority.

The council faces having to halve its workforce to 5,000 because it must slice tens of millions from its spending. A further 1,200 workers are likely to see their jobs axed before 2018.

The latest flood of applications includes some staff who know they will get potentially thousands less if they wait until after the government's exit payments cap comes in - probably next year.

That will impose strict limits on payouts while long-serving employees could see pension contributions severely curtailed. At Cumbria County Council, the current maximum payout is £45,000.

The council confirmed that applications have come from across the authority's workforce, including admin workers, business support staff, and so-called back office employees.

Social workers have been excluded from the voluntary redundancy process because the council is keen to ensure that it has enough working in Cumbria to keep children and families safe.

Union officials say the high number of applications for redundancy are a sorry reflection of the pressure council staff are under.


Anita Timperon Anita Timperon, a regional official with the public sector workers' union Unison, said: “There are a huge number of front-line staff who are under an immense amount of pressure. There was a time when working for a council was seen as having a job for life.

“That's no longer the case.

“People at the County Council are working under very challenging conditions. Some people are desperate to go.

“Unfortunately, we still have £75m worth of cuts to go, and we asked the council in February to open a voluntary redundancy window in the light of the Government brining in exit caps.

"There are limited opportunities so some people have applied to beat that deadline.” Mrs Timperon said that it was wrong to assume that local authority redundancy payments were routinely large.

She cited the example of one worker with 17 years experience, and paid a pro-rata salary of £27,000, who under the current terms would get just £7,000 because she now works part-time.

The root of the problem, she said, was the continuation of the Government's austerity agenda and its squeeze on public spending. Leader of the council Stewart Young agreed.

He said: “We're facing cut, after cut, after cut.

"There seems to be no end in sight. We've not got a new version of the Conservative government and we're waiting to see what Philip Hammond will say in his autumn statement.

“Will he stick to George Osborne's plan, will he soften it, or will he take the cuts even further?”