Wirral Council’s £1 million bill for early retirements

Jun 19 2009 Liverpool Daily Post

In 2007, the council began its wide-ranging review of its costs after it was revealed that it had to plug a £60m hole in its budget over the following three years.

Massive cuts in budgets across the authority were planned, totalling £45m up to 2011, to help fill the gap between income and spending.

The report to cabinet also revealed that the authority had – in the three years up to March 31, 2005 – exceeded the £5m allowance for early retirements by £1,782,422.

This is being repaid by the council at £413,000 per year over the five years from 2005/06 to 2009/10.

A spokesperson for Wirral Council said the early retirement figures forAdult Social Services are “part of our ongoing programme to transform the way we offer our services”, which includes “personalisation and personalised budgets, which give people more options over their care packages, but also towards signposting people to services offered by external providers”.