Wiltshire Council’s library service appears to be facing more job losses. Library staff have been invited to meetings in Chippenham (September 22) and in Salisbury and Warminster (September 23).
The letter inviting them to the meetings tells them that their ‘position has been identified as being at risk’ – it goes on to talk about government policies and a necessary reduction in the number of posts and working hours.
The process of which these meetings are part is being termed a ‘formal collective consultation’.
The Council’s library service has already suffered one round of cuts which resulted in some smaller libraries being staffed almost totally by volunteers.
This news comes on top of the planned loss of twenty jobs or more on Wiltshire Council’s grass cutting and street cleaning contract. The GMB union’s regional organiser, Carole Vallelly, has called ‘a minimum 20 redundancies’ out of a total workforce of 110 ‘a huge percentage’: “This will inevitably have a huge impact on the county’s environment.”
These cuts follow the transfer of most of the grounds staff from the failing Balfour Beatty contract to the Landscape Group which has secured the grass cutting and street cleaning contract up to 2020. The rest of the multi-million pound Balfour Beatty contract will be put out to tender.
Carole Vallelly told Marlborough News Online that after the earlier Wiltshire Council job losses: “We are getting to the stage where they a cutting down to the bone – and this will have a real impact on services.”
