Hampshire County Council is to axe 30 management posts at children’s centres across the county in a bid to save £3m.
The shake up, announced on May 27, will see 81 individually managed Sure Start children’s centres merged into 54.
In Basingstoke, six of the 11 centres will be paired and the borough will be split into two management ‘clusters’.
Lily Pads in Chineham will merge with The Courtyard in Basing, Badgers in Bishops Green could join with Home Tree in Tadley, and Bunnies in Hatch Warren is to merge with Buttercups in Brighton Hill.
The authority said all of the current 11 buildings will remain open and the merger will only affect back-office structure.
In addition, the county council has pledged to keep the county’s 120 family support workers.
Hampshire County Council’s executive lead member for children’s services, Councillor Roy Perry, said: “It was never our intention to close any of the centres. What was necessary, however, and what we proposed from the outset, was the streamlining of the management structures and back office support functions to reduce the running costs of the centres.
“It’s fair to say that even if we had not needed to make substantial savings from the budget we would have had to review the way in which children’s centres were organised as the pattern of 81 separately managed centres was not going to be sustainable long-term.”
Following February’s budget announcement, the county’s children services department was told to find £18m of savings by April 2012.
Council chiefs agreed to cut the children’s centre £17m budget by £6m. The merger and clustering of centres will save £3m, and the rest will be made up by reducing cash given to each centre.
Pressure group Save Our Children’s Centres Hampshire (SOCC), claims the loss of management staff and budget reduction will impact services.
In a statement, the group said: “Centre management will be scaled down with a total loss of 30 expert, professional managers who have, in some instances, spent six years establishing and building relationships with the local community they are part of.
“While today has been full of disappointment, it does at least lay bare the plans for our centres and these plans are not going to be of benefit to anybody except the bank balance of Hampshire County Council.”
The decision follows a two-and-a-half month consultation, to which 1,200 people responded. In May more than 22,000 people signed a petition that was presented to Downing Street by SOCC asking the Government to re-instate full funding for Sure Start centres. The plans are due to take effect in October 2011.
