Civil service redundancies

THE DEPARTMENT for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have made 19 wildlife officers compulsory redundant. These are the first civil servants to suffer compulsory redundancy as the government drives to slash over 80,000 jobs.

The PCS civil service union fears that if these redundancies go unchallenged, more will follow. PCS members at the two sites affected in Truro and Stroud, were meeting on 27 October to discuss the next step in the campaign. Defra employ 2,000 agency workers, so compulsory redundancies could have been avoided..

Wildlife officers are the staff who deal with events like outbreaks of bird flu and Bovine TB. The union fears that with the loss of these jobs, the government will use external charitable organisations and private contractors to carry out this important work.