IntaPeople, an IT recruitment company has warned that key IT personnel, including those working through umbrella companies, will resign from the public sector and secure better opportunities elsewhere.
Last week’s emergency budget included a public sector pay freeze and a crackdown on the very generous public pensions. Add to those measures an average 25% reduction in departmental budgets and life in the public sector is definitely going to be tough.
One of IntaPeople’s directors, Stephen Riley said that some IT professionals feel the government should assess individual circumstances rather than taking a blanket approach to salaries, pensions and recruitment.
Martin Ferguson from Socitm, the public sector IT managers’ group said that the budget did not recognise the vital role technology plays in achieving public efficiencies. He thinks the budget should have placed more emphasis on helping the technology industry modernise.
Ferguson said there was a need for the public sector to exploit shared services, cloud computing and other infrastructure developments. This will be a significant challenge to people working in government IT departments as well as the entire IT industry.
Outside of the public sector there was also fury from developers as the proposed tax relief on video games was axed. The relief had been proposed by the previous government in March and would have cost a total of £190m between 2011 and 2014.
French games companies currently enjoy tax relief and the chief executive of the games developers’ association, Richard Wilson, said the reversal could cost the UK millions of pounds in inward investment and lost jobs.
He believes that the government should be supporting the video games industry as it boosts exports and is low carbon in output.
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