Hertfordshire County Council cost-cutting review to save £16m results in 80 redundancies instead of 400 originally estimated

A review designed to improve efficiency and cut costs by £16m has resulted in far fewer members of staff at Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) being made redundant than originally estimated, councillors have been told.

Staffing, buildings and technology have all been scrutinised over the past 12 months as part of an ‘organisational resourcing’ review that was expected to reduce staff numbers by around 400.

But the number of redundancies is expected to be fewer than 100. Overall, the council employs around 8,000 people.

HCC’s deputy chief executive and director of resources, Scott Crudgington, updated councillors as they met last Tuesday (January 28) to scrutinise their £1.1 billion budget proposals for 2025-26.

He said the review had been driven by the financial challenges facing the county council, with a primary aim to meet a significant savings target of £16m a year.

He said they had looked at the way the council operates across key departments in a bid to remove duplication and make processes more efficient.

Mr Crudgington said that, based on mathematical calculations, they had been forecasting a ‘headcount reduction’ upwards of 400 in order to achieve the savings target.

But at the meeting he said that through matching people to vacant roles elsewhere in the council they were now expecting the number of redundancies to be fewer than 100.

Mr Crudgington made the remarks in response to a question that asked how the council would continue to attract and recruit new staff while still achieving the £16m savings target.

In a further statement issued to the Local Democracy Reporting Service after the meeting, Mr Crudgington confirmed 80 staff had been made redundant so far, with one consultation process still in progress.

He acknowledged that the council had lost “some very talented and able employees”.

“When we announced the start of our organisational resourcing review, we expected around 400 roles to be deleted from our total headcount,” he said.

“We were clear with elected members, staff and residents we would try to minimise the impact on our workforce, who, to their credit, have continued to work diligently to deliver for the people of the county despite the uncertainty they faced.

“To date, 80 colleagues have left the council due to redundancy.

“Keeping the number of redundancies as low as possible has been achieved by roles becoming vacant through retirement or employees finding alternative employment, not recruiting to some roles and redeploying staff who may have been at risk of redundancy.

“By taking proactive steps to pause non-essential recruitment early we have been able to keep redundancies to a minimum, but there should be no doubt the county council has lost some very talented and able employees as we reorganised to meet the challenges our budget presents.

“With just one consultation process in progress and scheduled to end by May, we remain on track to deliver the £16m of savings originally outlined.”