Wiltshire jobs to go as council approves youth service plan

The authority will scrap its current universal youth services provision in favour of a community-led model in a bid to save £190,000 from the department’s £1.2m budget.

A council report put before the cabinet on Thursday reveals that the model will see the creation of eight full-time youth support worker posts and four part-time community development youth advisers.

The purpose of the youth support workers is to strengthen the authority’s local safeguarding arrangements and will co-ordinate the delivery of targeted youth services for children with special educational needs.

The community development youth advisers will be responsible to new youth area boards, providing professional advice and support on services.

However, the paper also reveals that 50.3 full-time equivalent posts will be made redundant under the model, affecting 144 members of staff.

The council is yet to confirm how many staff members will lose their jobs but a council spokeswoman said the authority would seek to redeploy as many youth staff as possible.

Alan Tomala, regional officer of the union Unite, is worried about how the cuts will impact on the region’s young people.

He said: “I still have grave doubts, as do a number of young people and that was expressed during the debate.

“How this is going to pan out doesn’t seem very certain. The only certainty is that there will be cuts.

“We will meet with representatives to have a look at what the next stages are, but the bottom line is we do have very severe reservations as to whether or not these will work and what this will mean for young people and youth workers.”