council will axe beeching road office

Up to 50 employees working in amenities and environmental health will vacate their offices and work from the Town Hall instead.

The Beeching Road building will then be let out for commercial business use and it is hoped this will save the council £80,000 a year.

This is just one of the ways RDC is responding to the cut in central government grant by £1.7 million over the next two years.

The council had been gearing itself to budget over four years but is tightening its belt to fit the new timescale.

Chief executive Derek Stevens warned of change but said: “We are looking at this in a positive way. It is an opportunity to re-think how we deliver services to the public.”

He stressed the importance of maintaining Rother’s record of “high quality service” while developing a “sharper” way of working which will demand more from its 280 full-time employees.

Staff have been offered a scheme of voluntary redundancies but otherwise no jobs will be lost. Instead a new style of flexible working is seen as the way forward, with employees less deskbound and able to work from home or out on site, sharing office space as more of them inhabit the building, and ready to take on different roles as needs arise.

Self-service by members of the public is being emphasised as a way to reduce running costs with a larger reception area being created in the Town Hall to incorporate the community help point, which will move out of Amherst Road by the end of April.

The idea is to have one reception instead of four or five, and encourage people to help themselves as far as they can before needing time with a member of staff.

Mr Stevens said: “We have been encouraging people in the last year to deal with us by phone - as a council we have the only contact centre in the area. If people ring 787000 they will speak to someone who will deal with virtually any inquiry, from bin collection and rats in the garden to housing benefit and planning issues. One person will do that which is quite unique, so we are asking people to use the phone, or use our website.”

It is reckoned that a person-to-person inquiry at the Town Hall costs £15, £2 if conducted by phone, or just 30 pence if dealt with online.

“This focus on self-service is underpinning a lot of what we will be doing in the future,” he added.

“It is allowing us to reduce costs but making the service better for people and we have got a lot of positive feedback.”

RDC is also looking to make savings by sharing services such as refuse collection and recycling with Wealden District Council, or ground maintenance with Hastings Borough Council, and is talking with organisations such as Sussex Police and the fire service about maximising use of assets including buildings.

Meanwhile Mr Stevens admits Rother has been hit hard but is ready to meet the challenge, and said: “We are going to ride this storm better than most councils because of our prudential budgeting over the years.

“I am very confident we will get though it.

“We will reduce our costs but it will not be at the detriment of service delivery. In the next few years local government will look very different to how it does today. We have to change the way we do things. In three or four years’ time we will be an even leaner organisation, a more focused organisation, very efficient, and stronger. We have to go through a difficult time now - but that is our philosophy.”