MORE management jobs are being slashed at Worcestershire County Council in a drive to reduce bureaucracy.

Your Worcester News can reveal how it comes amid a fresh drive to up standards of those managers who remain in post.

Over the last two years the council has relentlessly slashed managers roles, after saying some departments had eight levels high.

Most of County Hall's workforce now works under five or six levels, but a fresh look managerial jobs has been launched to see if more fat can be cut.

Elaine Chandler, the head of HR, has admitted that decisions are "being made quicker" because front line staff have been handed more autonomy.

Since 2011 around 900 jobs have been axed and between 2012 and 2013, more than 80 high-ranking management roles were deleted.

Ms Chandler, speaking to councillors during a meeting of the resources, overview and scrutiny panel, said: "The ultimate aim is to get to five levels in as many areas as possible.

"We've done a lot of work with the staff and the general feeling is that by de-layering the management decisions are being made quicker, but more importantly because decisions are being made closer to the front line, they are better decisions."

She said with around 1,500 in-house jobs due to by by 2018, one of the pressing issues was morale.

Ms Chandler also revealed how fresh efforts are being made to improve the quality of people in managerial roles.

"For the last year we've been piloting a 'selection centre' for children's services managers, so when we take people on we put them through strict tests first to see if they are good enough.

"So you say 'let's test how they deal with poor performance', or 'let's see how they do appraisals and handle good performance' - this way we know the people we are taking on are good."

She said "if you keep on putting rubbish in the management pot, it won't work".

She added: "In some directorates we had eight levels of management, the majority now have five or six and there's the odd level of seven.

"As head of HR I am now challenging it to say 'why are you still at this level'.

"It's about being lean and challenging things - we've stripped out a lot of management but we're trying to get to five levels as much as we can."

Councillor Liz Tucker, a Liberal Democrat, said: "Sometimes old dogs don't want to learn new tricks, there's always an element of that where you need to change the culture."