SHARED computer services could save councils up to £400,000 a year – but it will cost jobs.

District councils in Worcester, Wychavon, and Malvern Hills, along with Worcestershire County Council, are looking at creating a shared ICT service.

A pilot exercise has already been running for the last six months and, if it is accepted by all parties, it could come into effect as early as April.

It is proposed the county council would run it, although the members of staff who do manage to keep their jobs would stay where they are to ensure they can deal with local issues.

Grahame Lucas, head of financial services at the city council, said this was primarily a money-saving exercise.

At the city council’s scrutiny committee in the Guildhall he said: “With back office functions we need to provide quality services at the lowest possible cost.

“My own view is do we necessarily need to worry where we are getting that from?”

Mr Lucas said doing something like this would help to protect frontline services. We previously reported in your Worcester News how the city council needs to make £4.5 million savings over the next five years.

It is projected a shared ICT service would only save the city £460 in its first year but that would rocket up to £73,010 in 2011/12 before rising again to £117,670 the year after that. Once fully implemented, the savings made by all councils would total £396,874 in 2012/13. Savings will differ between all of the councils depending on the systems each council already has in place and how much needs to be ‘harmonised’ with the other authorities.

If it gets the go-ahead about 40 employees would transfer into the new service next year. It is proposed four full-time employees would lose their jobs by the end of 2012/13.

Although it is hoped any redundancies would come through natural wastage and redeployment to other teams, that would depend on workloads at that time.

Scrutiny committe chairman Geoff Williams questioned whether sharing ICT services would benefit customers. He said: “We’ve got figures for the savings but we never get anything to say how the customer is going to benefit other than clichés in a report.”

Concerns were also raised that Worcester City Council is getting rid of all its services and will be left with nothing. Councillor Adrian Gregson, opposition Labour leader, said: “Are we going to end up doing anything other than sitting around a table once a year ticking boxes and saying ‘that’s how we’re going to do it’ and then going home again?” Fellow Labour Councillor Jo Hodges echoed that sentiment.

It is now up to all affected councils to decide whether to go ahead with the project.