Council property workers worried about job cuts

More than half of property people in local authorities are worried about losing their jobs as a result of government spending cuts, a PublicPropertyUK.com survey suggests.

Today, PublicPropertyUK.com and public sector jobs site jobsgopublic.com have published the results of their survey, How will spending cuts affect you and your job?

It reveals widespread fear over spending cuts among the 121 respondents working in property and planning in the public sector.

Of 82 respondents in local authorities, 57% said they were either quite worried or very worried about losing their jobs,  while 60% revealed that they were worried about a blanket freeze on public sector recruitment.

Nine out of ten local authority respondents said this would place strain on their bodies’ ability to carry out work.

There are also fears over the ability of public sector organisations to make spending cuts, with around 40% of people in local authorities saying their organisation was either not at all or not very well positioned to make cuts.

The same number disagreed with the Coalition’s policy of making quick cuts to public spending.

Bob Perry, president of the Association of Chief Estates Surveyors, said: “This is clearly a worrying time for all property people employed in local government and the wider public sector.

“Staff costs are always the largest element in any employer’s budget, and we all know that authorities will now be carefully considering not only what staff they need, but also whether they can affords to continue to employ them.

“No doubt some slack will be taken up by job-sharing, reduced-hours working and voluntary redundancies, but there must now be a very real chance of compulsory redundancies within some parts of the public sector.

“The old cliché about the public sector offering jobs for life has never been correct, but in the present climate it’s even less true.”

See the slideshow below for the full results of the survey:

McCready and Grigg to speak at Public Property Summit

Property Unit head John McCready and British Land chief executive Chris Grigg have been announced today as speakers at the Public Property Summit in November.

Nine headline speakers confirmed for the 1-2 November at the Business Design Centre in London are:

John McCready, Property Unit managing director, Shareholder Executive

Francis Salway, chief executive, Land Securities

Chris Grigg, chief executive, British Land

Nigel Smith, chief executive, Office for Government Commerce

Sir Bob Kerslake, chief executive, Homes and Communities Agency

Ian Ellis, executive chairman, Telereal Trillium

Mike Slade, chief executive, Helical Bar

Chris Kane, head of corporate real estate, BBC Workplace

Sir Howard Bernstein, chief executive, Manchester City Council

The conference is anticipating 2,500 exhibition visitors and 250 delegates from across the public and private sectors. The summit has been organised in response to the efforts of the government to more efficiently manage the £370bn of publicly owned property in the UK.

The event is being supported by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveors, OGC, the government’s Shareholder Executive, Local Partnership, the Association of Chief Estates Surveyors, the British Property Federation and CIPFA Property. Sponsors include DTZ, Helical Bar, Drivers Jona Deloitte, Gleeds, Lambert Smith Hampton and King Sturge.

To see more details, click here

2010: Public people under pressure

In 2010 public sector property people will come under more pressure than they have for a generation.

Whoever wins the general election that is expected on 6 May, public spending will have to be cut for the Treasury to repair a public sector deficit expected to reach an eye-watering £178bn in 2009/10. Initiatives like the Operational Efficiency Programme, Smarter Government and others will put a lot of pressure on public sector property managers to get better value from their properties.

Central government is looking at property too. The appointment of John McCready as head of the government’s new Property Unit in mid-December means that central government will be looking to get the best value out of the public sector property estate, which has an estimated value of £385bn. The private sector is set to see opportunities from asset sales, joint ventures and more.

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