Drive to reduce costs – pay freeze for managers

At a time when everyone is struggling it is only right that those working in the public sector share the pain with those in the private. I have been concerned about pay escalation in the public sector for some time so welcomed the decision to freeze senior managers pay.

Cambridgeshire County Council has frozen the cost of living payments for managers as part of the authority’s drive to reduce costs. Major political parties have indicated cuts in public spending are on the way and forecasts show that Cambridgeshire County Council will be £113 million worse off in five years time than it is now.

As a part of tightening its belt councillors have agreed that managers, from the Chief Executive down, will not receive an increase in the so called annual cost of living award. Frontline staff, who are usually the most lowest paid and work with some of the most vulnerable people, will receive the nationally agreed 1 per cent rise – equating to around an extra £2 for many workers a week. Some staff may also receive a rise to reward exceptional performance.

Staff were notified in September of the new pay arrangements. Cambridgeshire County Council is one of the top authorities for its use of resources, being awarded four stars (the highest award) by the Audit Commission.

 

Gritting Update

“Further to your e mail to Richard I can confirm that it was recommended to the Environment Services Cabinet Lead Member & Spokesmen on 5th October that Fulbourn Old Drift, Teversham Drift and Kelsey Crescent were removed from our precautionary gritting routes. This recommendation was accepted.

This summer we reviewed all our routes Countywide.

We highlighted the ones that do not fit in to our current objectives for Winter Maintenance precautionary salting.

That is we give priority to :

• Roads that carry the heaviest early morning traffic
• Roads linking centres of population
• B roads and busy roads adjacent to fen roads
• Roads that link salted route with those of other adjoining counties
• Making sure all road users live within a reasonable distance of a salted route

We also try to salt all bus routes where possible.

Teversham Drift  and Kelsey Crescent are residential roads that are not bus routes.

Fulbourn Old Drift is a dead end road where turning the gritter around is extremely difficult.

All three of these route will be on our list of Secondary Routes.

It was also recommended to the same meeting that our policy regarding the treatment of these Secondary Routes was amended. We will now treat the secondary network when 5 days of freezing conditions are forecast, rather than after 5 days of freezing conditions have occurred. I am sure this will mean far more treatments to the secondary routes than previously.”

We will need to see how this change of policy has impacted on our roads at the end of the winter.