Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance is calling for assurances that staff will not face compulsory redundancies when the number of councils is reduced from 26 to 11. The union has already warned that plans to cut 450 jobs at the housing executive may be just the ‘tip of the iceberg' for public sector staff, and assistant general secretary, Bumper Graham, has warned that up to 10,000 jobs could be at stake because of the reorganisation of government departments. Environment minister, Arlene Foster, told the Northern Ireland Assembly that the 11 new district councils were due to come into operation from 2011, and that priority would be given to the appointment of a local government boundaries commissioner to draw up their final boundaries.
