A COUNCIL scrutiny committee is to examine how a cost-cutting plan for the district’s children’s centres hit major delays.

Bradford Council is pressing ahead with controversial cutbacks to its children’s centres in a bid to save £2.4 million a year - but the plans have hit five-month delays, costing £700,000 of the savings.

Last month, the Children's Services overview and scrutiny committee chairman Malcolm Sykes announced it would be looking into the issue. He said he wanted to know what had gone wrong and how.

Now, a new report going before the committee says the delays have been caused by "the complexity of the property issues involved".

Under the plans, the council is grouping its 41 children's centres into seven new clusters. It is also downgrading nine centres so they are no longer Ofsted-registered Sure Start children’s centres, but instead will be 'delivery sites', providing fewer services.

So far, one cluster, to be run by the council in Keighley, has been formed on schedule.

Three more clusters are on track to be created in September, for Airedale and Wharfedale, west Bradford and the Lister Park area of Bradford. They will be run by local nursery schools.

But the final three, which should have been formed in south Bradford, east Bradford and the BD5 area by October, and run by external providers, have hit delays and will not be ready until March.

The report says: "The change process has inevitably given rise to uncertainties for staff about future employment.

"This has led to some staff securing alternative posts elsewhere which is impacting on the staffing capacity within the centres in these three clusters."

More details about the staffing cuts made so far are also revealed.

When the Keighley cluster was formed, 32 of 40 employees were kept on, with four agreeing to work fewer hours.

Eight were deployed elsewhere within the council's children's services department and two applied for voluntary redundancy.

Meanwhile, at the Airedale and Wharfedale, west Bradford and Lister Park clusters, 92 of 119 staff have been kept on, 14 are being given voluntary redundancy and 13 are looking for other jobs within the Council.

The scrutiny committee meets at City Hall, Bradford, at 4.30pm on Wednesday.