Dean Shoesmith has urged caution on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR’s) “speculative” downward predictions for public sector job losses.

This week, the OBR, the government’s independent fiscal watchdog, announced that just 330,000 civil servants will lose their jobs over the next four years, compared with June’s 490,000 estimate.

But the joint executive head of HR, London Boroughs of Sutton and Merton, and president of the Public Sector People Manager’s Association (PPMA), told Recruiter that such predictions are always speculative.

Shoesmith says: “What I do know from local government is that there are likely to be 140,000 job losses in local government based on announcements made by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

“I think we will be looking at 500,000 job losses. Much will depend on how much the private sector can absorb public sector job losses. My view is that the percentage reduction in budget as a result of the Comprehensive Spending Review according to early estimates indicates more job losses not less due to the reduced scale of grant allocations and cutbacks. We are making our workforce calculations on a worse basis not a better one.

“The local government settlement has not been announced yet. I do think local government is one part of the public sector which will be hard hit. These are just predictions. We won’t know absolutes until staff are made redundant and notices of redundancy are served.

“These are best estimates and they will go up and down depending on how the private sector is growing and how many job opportunities are created for people to be moved across from the public to the private sector.”