The long awaited comprehensive spending review was revealed by Chancellor George Osborne in October as he announced the government’s four-year Spending Review to Parliament. He revealing some of the deepest cuts in public spending in decades, here Technical Moves – Specialist recruitment look at the likely effect on Recruitment, Jobs and Employment for East Anglia.

The the key announcements likely to effect Recruitment, Jobs, Employment and Construction projects in East Anglia are as follows:

• About 490,000 public sector jobs likely to be lost
• Average 19% four-year cut in departmental budgets
• Structural deficit to be eliminated by 2015
• £7bn in additional welfare budget cuts
• Police funding cut by 4% a year
• Retirement age to rise from 65 to 66 by 2020
• English schools budget protected; £2bn extra for social care
• NHS budget in England to rise every year until 2015
• Regulated rail fares to rise 3% above inflation
• Bank levy to be made permanent

Technical Moves – Specialist Recruitment comment:

“The Chancellor detailed a number of announcements that we feel will have a direct impact on recruitment, the construction industry and Jobs within East Anglia as a region. Some of the major decisions are as follows:-

* Almost £10 billion of funding will be available for new schools capital projects over the next four financial years

* The Chancellor has pledged to invest £30 billion in UK transport projects over the next four years and gave the green light to a number of projects in the process including the final dualing of the A11 in Norfolk. As has already been widely documented the A14 project has not been given the go ahead and will have a major impact on future growth plans for Cambridgeshire.

* The Social housing budget has been slashed and has been allocated £4.4 bn of capital resources which the Chancellor said would build “up to” 150,000 new affordable homes of the next four years

* Construction capital spending is likely to fall by £3.5bn which is less than the industry had been bracing itself for.

The Jobs market within East Anglia, particularly for Architecture, Civil Engineering and Construction have already affected by the economic downturn but we feel that it is important that structural deficit is addressed immediately. The true impact of the governments plans on recruitment and jobs within this region will not be truly seen for at least two years when we will have a clearer picture on if the balance has been correct. Only then will be able to see if the private sector has been able to take up the slack within the employment sector and generated news to replace the cuts to the public sector.”