Councils face senior staff shortage

Councils face a looming staffing crisis, according to a research report by think tank the New Local Government Network (NLGN). Leading lights — recruiting the next generation in local government says that over the next decade councils “are set to lose significantly higher proportions of senior managers” compared to other areas of the public sector.

Two-thirds of local government employees are over 40, while the proportion of those aged under 25 is half that of the economy generally. But focus groups of graduates interviewed for the research, revealed “a depressingly negative impression of working in local government”.

Senior national officer for the UNISON public services union Lucille Thirlby said this showed that more needs to be done “to promote local government for what it really is”.

The NLGN says the government should establish a “National Governing Britain Fast Track” which would scrap the existing system of having separate graduate schemes for central and local government. This way graduates would gain experience of working in both Whitehall and local government.

National secretary of the GMB general union Brian Strutton said the union had already warned of an impending recruitment crisis in local government. He said the GMB had told council leaders that “they need to make themselves an employer of choice” which means paying “decent pay rates to attract people in”.