No redundancies planned in Luton Rising staff shake-up

Approval was being sought for the Luton Rising restructure organisational change assessment (OCA) to create 20 new roles and add two extra service directors, said the report to the council’s administration and regulation committee.

There are 20 posts to be deleted under the process, nine of which are currently unfilled or no longer required in the new structure. With 20 new roles being created, it means a net impact of nine jobs against the current employed positions.

Although this agenda report was made public, the meeting discussed the contents behind closed doors. After completing the opening formalities, new committee chairman and Labour Saints councillor Saima Hussain was told the report was marked as confidential.

A 30-day consultation with all staff was held between July 2 and August 3, while employees affected directly and indirectly took part in formal engagement meetings during July, explained the report.

“All employees were given the opportunity to comment on the proposed structure, job descriptions, reporting lines and future opportunities within Luton Rising.

“There was broad understanding of and acceptance of the rationale for organisational change. No formal objections were raised to the need for restructuring itself.

“Feedback focused mainly on the detail of proposed roles, reporting lines, implementation arrangements and retaining organisational knowledge. An alternative proposal for the structure of finance was suggested.

“But it was felt this would be more suitably addressed once LBC’s new finance director is in post. A separate OCA process will happen at that time.”

Luton Rising has developed a ten-year strategy to support Luton 2040, added the report. “This strategy was approved by the shareholder in September 2025, and has stretching targets and objectives that will be progressed via seven workstreams.

“One of the key findings from the development work is that Luton Rising’s current organisational design, capabilities and capacities aren’t adequate to deliver the strategy.

“An extensive piece of work aimed to identify how to organise the structure to ensure successful delivery of all seven workstreams. In some areas of the organisation, the changes are minor and affect reporting lines, job titles and department structure.

“In other areas, there are clear gaps that need to be filled by either changing role responsibilities or creating new roles to fill the capability gaps. Staff provided feedback on job descriptions, which was considered and where appropriate the changes have been made to some of the job descriptions.

“Two job titles were proposed to be changed, with the Luton DART general manager retitled to head of DART operations, and the community funding manager to become senior manager social impact and community investment.

“The key drivers for the OCA included:

• to increase headcount in the finance and aviation function, directly supporting the development consent order (DCO) workstream, as this area has been understaffed and under-skilled;
• not enough resource, capability and resource to prepare for the end of the current airport concession and prepare for the future model;
• to plan and deliver strategic opportunities including the DCO, Bartlett Square and other key investment sites across the town;
• and ensure compliant, safe and profitable assets.”

Luton Rising engaged a consultant to help create the structure required to deliver the strategy, making it less reliant on consultants and contractors to fill capability gaps, said the report.