SENIOR borough Tories have accused Dudley Council of “misleading” the public by saying plans to radically restructure the senior management team would result in a £1million saving.

The authority estimated it could make the seven-figure saving by cutting five director and assistant director positions and replacing them with three strategic directors and eight chief officers.

But Councillor Mike Wood, Conservative Group spokesman for finance and the party’s candidate in Dudley South in the forthcoming General Election, told Wednesday's cabinet meeting the actual saving, once “hundreds of thousands of pounds in redundancy payments for senior officers” and other associated costs were taken into consideration, would be “just £88,000 in real new savings”.

He told Labour leaders: “We cannot have any confidence in this budget. This really hasn’t delivered much if anything at all.

“You’ve been taking the borough for a ride. It’s misleading when you say the saving is £1million. The net saving is at most £88,000.”

Councillor Les Jones dubbed the £1million figure “an old saving being relaunched” and that the money had already been “committed in the previous budget”.

He added: “It hasn’t come about as a result of this restructure – it was already going to come about.”

Councillor Stuart Turner, the council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for finance, said the £1million saving would be “going forward in this particular budget” and added: “It hasn’t been factored in yet. Redundancy payments will be made through reserves – there won’t be any additional cost.”

Councillor Pete Lowe, leader of the council, said Dudley had introduced “one of the leanest management structures in the whole of local government in the country”.