Cash-strapped Hampshire County Council has approved more than 350 voluntary resignations, saving a total of £4.5 million.

In light of the forecasted budget shortfall of £182.2 million for 2025/26, Hampshire County Council has put in place different mechanisms to generate savings and help the administration to close the books.

In November 2024, the forecast budget gap for 2025/26 was £116.2 million. The council reduced the gap to £97.6 million, including by rolling out the first phase of its ‘Saving Proposal 25’.

In the same month, Hampshire County Council’s employment committee approved the Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme (MARS), which allowed staff to leave their jobs voluntarily in return for a payment.

According to the council, 354 MARS applications were accepted across the organisation, and all but six were implemented as part of the agreed-upon process.

This has generated a saving of £4.5 million, £5.7 million lower than if the council had gone down the compulsory redundancy route.

The council documents revealed that £2.2 million comes from children’s services, while £1.5 million comes from adults’ health and care. Additionally, £447,000 is sourced from universal services, with the remainder from the three other departments.

However, councillors asked Stuart Ashely, the director of children’s services, and Patrick Blogg, the director of universal services, what impact this would have on the services and the rest of the staff.

Cllr Pal Hayre inquired whether the losses would result in additional workloads for the remaining staff, potentially increasing pressure and prompting some employees to seek employment elsewhere.

Mr Blogg said: “Absolutely not. We, as the directorate management team and I, in my role, considered all applications very carefully, and we were very clear about where a role was critical; we just could not afford to lose that person; we were not able to accept the MARS application.

Mr Ashley said that 86 applications had been approved in his department, but he had received more than 220. However, not all of them will be accepted.

He said: “We are very clear: If we need to replace your post, you are not going to leave soon. 

“Overall, 86 members of staff are leaving us. I’m very confident none of those will have a detrimental impact on our capacity or in the safeguarding of our children.”

The scheme has been included in phase two of the savings proposal, which has generated a total of £29.4m to reduce the deficit.

Despite the efforts, and after applying the savings generated, the budget is still in deficit, leaving a total gap of £68.2 million.

Currently, the chief officers have presented two alternatives to balance the budget.

‘Set A’ is a balanced budget with a small contribution to reserves, helped by a 15 per cent council tax rise. For this, the council either needs government approval or have a referendum. If this does not happen and the council tax rise is set at 5 per cent – for which no permission from government or residents is needed – then ‘Set B’ is drawn from balances of £68.2 million to balance the budget.

Cabinet will debate the recommendations on Tuesday, February 4.