Sir – Alan Hollis (Letters, November 3) has the wrong end of the stick.
He complains that several jobs from the council’s strategy team are being advertised at great cost. This is not the case.
It is true that there are a number of vacancies in the strategy team following a recent restructure. However, these are not newly-created jobs as Mr Hollis insinuates. They are roles that currently stand vacant after a recent restructure.
As part of the very same restructure, 16 posts were permanently removed from the council’s books leading to large financial savings. The vacant posts to which Mr Hollis refers exist to support key service managers in delivering key frontline services.
In a situation where we are reducing the number of posts, our internal job finder team do their best to fill the reduced number of jobs from the pool of employees affected by the restructuring.
Unfortunately, by mistake, the vacancies did appear briefly on the public website but they were withdrawn immediately when it was realised they were there.
Mr Hollis may wish to know that the council has reduced the number of posts on its books by 660 (11.3 per cent) in the last 15 months to June — a large number of these being managers. This is a vastly different picture to the one Mr Hollis seeks to portray.
David Robertson, Deputy Leader, Oxfordshire County Council
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