It Pays To Question Their Decision

For a long time now, Industrial Relations at Birmingham Council haven't been quite what they should be, between an employer and employee.
With the enforced pay & grading debacle, and more recent problems around street cleaning and refuse collection, we now have the icing the this cake, the number of appeals by staff to the regrading process, where we hear that nearly 6 out of ten appeals have returned successfully for the employee, costing the council an additional £9million and there are a further 1,000 appeals still to hear.
Now what really takes the biscuit is that the Council Officers and Executive Councillors only budgeted for £3.5 million in wages to be paid to successful employees, so there is a massive hole to be filled.
We now know that to fill the gap either the Council Tax needs to rise, which will be debated early in the New Year. Will it  have to go up by an additional 2.5 % or are there planned additional cuts to services needed. I believe the latter will be the option taken by this authority, rather than lose face with their ongoing 1.9% rise year on year.