August 26, 2022 3.29 pm This story is over 34 months old

Council staffing shortage “greatest concern” in East Lindsey

Overloaded council workers struggle to find colleagues
The former East Lindsey District Council offices at Tedder Hall.

There are fears that staffing shortages could leave East Lindsey District Council officers “struggling… to do the job effectively and efficiently,” as the authority looks for ways to recover from COVID-19.

A draft report on “How ELDC can respond to the post-COVID impact on our communities” will go before the council’s Overview Committee on Tuesday, September 6.

Councillor Jill Makinson-Sanders, who led the panel of six councillors, said in her introduction that the cohort of staff was “probably where our greatest concern lies,” adding that it applied not just to ELDC but back-office providers and the Public Service Partnership Services with Boston Borough and South Holland District Councils.

“Recruitment and retention are challenges not just faced by this council, local government is stretched to breaking point by the new normal post Covid,” she said.

“Capacity worried all our members, and after a year of looking at the effects of Covid, we know our officers will continue to struggle without enough people to do the job effectively and efficiently – to the detriment of our ratepayers in all corners of the district.

“We cannot stress this concern loudly enough.”

The panel has been meeting since early Spring and has interviewed a number of chief executives, portfolio holders and other officers asking them about the government’s levelling up agenda, the council’s corporate strategies and aims and the future of the authority.

The panel concluded the the councils corporate priorities have “stood the test of time” but that tweaks would need to be made.

They added that they had several issues which they said should be taken very seriously including the “worsening economy”, “deteriorating health statistics” and “lack of connectivity” to broadband.

The panel has put forward 13 recommendations to the authority including the development of a new strategy to learn lessons, reinstating Local Area Forums, commissioning research into the health of the district and extra training and staffing capacity.