Auckland Council plans up to 160 job cuts
Monday, 16 September 2019
Auckland Council plans to cut up to 160 jobs in the coming year to fund new recruits in areas dealing with the city's growth.
The juggling act will cap the growth of staff numbers at the country's biggest local body at between 6,600 and 6,700.
The council's finance and human resources departments will be the first to undergo changes to reduce staff.
Chief executive Stephen Town said additional staff were needed to manage growth such as building inspections.
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The council had kept both its staff numbers and salary cost within targets for this year, but Town said the demands of keeping up with growth meant more recruitment would be needed in some areas through 2020.
'We have to find savings elsewhere, reducing layers of management, ending the duplication of some back-office services, and giving frontline staff more autonomy to fix problems upon first contact,' Town told Stuff.
The council ended the financial year on June 30 with the equivalent of 6,548 full-time staff, a measure which bundles part-timers into so-called full time equivalents (FTEs).
That does not include those employed by council agencies, or Ports of Auckland, which it owns.
Town said he told the council total numbers might need to rise, both due to growth, and new programmes funded by targeted rates for the environment and water quality.
Some of the reductions could be made by not filling vacancies in an organisation with staff turnover of 15 per cent each year.
The reductions would not be the biggest re-organisation since the council was formed in 2010 following the amalgamation of eight previous local bodies.
Councillors had given the organisation the green light to boost staffing over the past year to help manage population growth of 4 per cent.
The full details of council numbers and salary levels will be released soon in the annual report.