Waltham Forest Council has approved a senior management restructure aimed at streamlining operations and addressing financial pressures. The council is currently facing substantial financial pressures and ongoing economic uncertainty, requiring them to find over £23.3m in savings and cost reductions for 2025/26 and at least an additional £10.6m by 2027/28.
The decision, made during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday 15 July 2025, follows a consultation period with staff and trade unions that ran from 7 May to 20 June 2025. The restructure involves changes to senior management positions at the Corporate Director, Assistant Director, and Head of Service levels.
The approved plan includes deleting 34 full-time equivalent (FTE) posts and creating 25 new ones. A further seven posts are affected by changes to job titles or role profiles to ensure continuity and service resilience. According to council documents, these changes are designed to address financial pressures and improve the council's ability to deliver its strategic priorities, namely the council's Mission Waltham Forest priorities. The report states that to deliver Mission Waltham Forest, the council needs to work differently, requiring joined-up, preventative and resident focused responses that cannot be delivered by any one part of the Council working alone.
The 'As Is' and 'To Be' structure charts are available in Appendix D. These changes are expected to contribute additional savings to the Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS).
The council has stated that the restructure aligns with its Inclusion Action Plan, with a focus on promoting diversity and addressing gender and ethnicity pay gaps. An Equalities Impact Assessment (EQIA) was conducted to assess the potential effects of the restructure on staff with protected characteristics, and mitigating actions were proposed to address any disproportionalities. These actions include ensuring diverse interview panels with up-to-date diversity and inclusion training, enhanced support and training for affected staff, and an enhanced redeployment programme with skills matching across directorates, interview training, and extended trial periods.
The approved changes are expected to result in a 14% reduction in senior management positions. The report states that the changes to Senior Management across all directorates have been considered with continuity and quality of service delivery in mind, and in many cases this restructure is a precursor to operating model reviews and subsequent restructures across services. This proactive approach allows the organisation to identify and address potential issues before they impact service quality. The final costings relating to the restructure cannot be fully calculated at this time and will not be known until posts have been filled. The costings for the project have assumed actual salaries where post holders are in place but have been calculated on mid-points for new and vacant posts.
Councillor Paul Douglas, Portfolio Lead Member for Finance and Resources, presented the proposals, which aim to streamline management structures and clarify accountabilities. The council has stated that the restructure aligns with its Inclusion Action Plan, with a focus on promoting diversity and addressing gender and ethnicity pay gaps. An Equalities Impact Assessment (EQIA) was conducted to assess the potential effects of the restructure on staff with protected characteristics, and mitigating actions were proposed to address any disproportionalities.
The agenda also included routine items such as apologies for absence, declarations of interest, and approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. Additionally, the Cabinet was expected to consider excluding the press and public from a portion of the meeting to discuss confidential information related to the senior management restructure.