Agenda item

Report from the Harrow Unison LG Branch.

The Forum received a report of the Harrow Unison LG Branch which outlined the ‘lift and shift’ of four staff from one Directorate to another and their subsequently being served with notices of termination.

A Representative made the following points:

·                     the management of the ‘lift and shift’ and subsequent redundancies of the four staff had breached the Council’s agreed employment protocols and corporate governance arrangements;

·                     the process in relation to the ‘lift and shift’ and subsequent notices of termination had not been carried out in an open and transparent manner and the consultation process in relation to these had been inadequate;

·                     management’s attitude had been disrespectful towards these long-serving members of staff;

·                     those officers responsible should be held accountable and the staff in question should be redeployed as a matter of urgency;

·                     the Council’s Human Resources practices should be improved and amended to ensure this type of occurrence did not recur in the future.

Officers advised that:

·                     the four staff in question had been employed in the Transformation Management Support Team in the Community Health & Wellbeing (CH&W) Directorate.  As part of their MTFS savings proposals the four members of staff in question were ‘lifted and shifted’ to Business Support and although they carried out business support type roles, they had not been put on BS gradings or had their role profiles changed, and therefore sat outside BS function;

·                     the restructure proposed by the Chief Executive in April 2015, as part of the wider organisational restructure, meant that the Business Support (BS) function, including the Transformation Management Support Team, was moved from the CH&W Directorate to the Resources Directorate;

·                     following assessment of the budget for this service it was noted that there was no  budget for these staff and the service departments supported by the Transformation Management Support Team advised that the work carried out by three of them was no longer required;

·                     following consultation, the staff in question were given notices of redundancy.  They had been offered the options of re-deployment and salary protection, however, they had not taken up these offers.  The staff had also not appealed the decision to make them redundant.;

·                     two meetings had taken place between managers in CH&W and Resources to confirm that the work carried out by the Transformation Management Support Team was no longer required, although there was no formal paper or email trail to support this.  However, the 2014 consultation pack, which had been shared with the unions, made it clear that the savings in the MTFS included the salaries of these 4 posts;

·                     it was the responsibility of HR to ensure that appropriate Council policies, processes and employment law were followed in relation to these 4 staff members, however, evaluating and overseeing budgets in relation to staffing requirements was not part of the HR function.

In summing up, the Chair urged officers to:

·                     make every effort to ensure re-deployment opportunities were offered to the three staff members in question;

·                     review HR and staff management protocols to ensure ‘lessons were learnt’ from these events; and

·                     that the Council’s agreed employment  protocols, corporate governance arrangements in relation to staffing and agreements with the unions should be adhered to at all times.

RESOLVED:  That the reports be noted.