Students being turned away by colleges highlights need for support services

Wed 2 Jan 2013

UNISON today called on Scottish Education Secretary Mike Russell to guarantee proper staffing for support services in colleges, after figures showed thousands of suitably qualified students are being turned away.

Figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests show colleges across Scotland don’t have places for thousands of applicants, with many put onto waiting lists.

UNISON, the union representing college support staff, is deeply concerned about the impact of massive cuts to college budgets and warned that students rely heavily on support services, including for choosing the correct course after guidance.

Chris Greenshields, chair of UNISON’s Further Education Committee, said: “This proves there is a greater need for more support services to quickly deal with the increase in applications we have seen for college courses over the last few years, not fewer, as suggested by current proposals.

“Applicants require a quick response to avoid languishing on waiting lists for months. If the planned £50 million savings result in slashing of support staff jobs then this will make the position more difficult for applicants to get quick and clear responses from colleges in relation to their applications and their future.

“We have lost 1300 jobs in the sector in the last year alone. If further cuts in support staff numbers take place, there won't be enough support staff left in our colleges to answer the phones, never mind provide the proper pre-entry support and guidance which our college applicants require.

“We need guarantees from Mr Russell that support services in our colleges will be properly staffed. UNISON is seeking urgent discussions with the Scottish Government to ensure that staff numbers won't fall further after the mergers. Also, as we have said frequently, there is no evidence that mergers will result in the huge savings predicted through shared services.”

ENDS

Notes for editors
The FOI responses were released by the Scottish Liberal Democrats: http://scotlibdems.org.uk/news/2013/01/figures-reveal-thousands-are-being-turned-away-college  

Scottish UNISON Scotland publications on current aspects of Further Education:

College regionalisation response

http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/response/Response%20to%20college%20regionalisation%20proposals%20december%20201%85.pdf 

Examples of problems with mergers

http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/response/MergerofEdinburghColleges_June2012.pdf

http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/response/MergerofScottishAgriculturalCollegeandLandbasedColleges_May2012.pdf

FE governance response

http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/response/Evidence%20to%20review%20of%20FE%20governance%20%20October%202011.pdf 

Post 16 education response

http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/response/Response%20to%20Putting%20learners%20at%20the%20centre%20post%2016%20educati%85.pdf  

(Newspaper reports today on thousands of students turned away: Daily Record, Evening Times )

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New UNISON study argues for proper service redesign instead of back office cuts through flawed 'shared service' models

Tuesday 20 March 2012


The front line starts here

A new 16-page report for UNISON Scotland argues that 'efficiency savings' which are often expected from piecemeal organisational change such as flawed 'shared services' models are rarely achieved. In fact, the vast majority of front line staff - around 90% - who have faced cuts to so-called 'back office' admin jobs believe this has been at the expense of their primary tasks.

'The front line starts here' document, published today, outlines the case for full service redesign to be explored as an option when developing shared front and back office service proposals.

Dave Watson, Head of Bargaining and Campaigns, said:
"The UK National Audit Office reported this month that Whitehall departments have spent a staggering £1.4 billion over the past seven years - but saved just £159 million by ill-advised schemes for sharing 'back office' functions such as personnel and procurement.

"Our report highlights the importance of designing systems from the service user upwards - as opposed to piecemeal organisational change in the form of structures, which is resulting in the separation and fragmentation of services across the Scottish public sector.

"We want to end that kind of waste. Instead we want to work with public authorities to explore full service redesign as an option when developing shared front and back office service proposals."

The new report includes results from a UNISON survey of frontline public service worker in areas like social work and protective services, which shows that cutbacks in admin functions have damaging effects on vital public service, and are rarely effective or efficient.

Dave Watson said:
"The vast majority of the front line workers we surveyed - 94% - believed that it was more effective to provide administrative support in the same office than to centralise in 'shared service' type back office operations. 'The front line starts here' seeks to expose the flaws in creating artificial splits between the front and back office services when setting up shared service delivery arrangements, as back and front office services are interdependent."

ends

Note to editors:

1. UNISON is Scotland’s largest trade union representing over 160,000 members working in the public sector in Scotland. Our members work together in the teams providing vital public services for all our communities - whether they are regarded as 'frontline' or 'back office'.

2. 'The front line starts here' was prepared for UNISON Scotland by APSE – the Association for Public Service Excellence (Scotland) - and is available for download here:
www.unison-scotland.org.uk/publicworks/ thefrontlinestartshere_mar2012.pdf 

3. Results of UNISON Scotland survey 2011 included in 'The front line starts here' document:

In 2011 UNISON Scotland surveyed a sample of ‘front office’ staff on administrative support. Primarily professional staff in local government such as social work, planning, protective services etc. The key findings included:

• 87% reported that their administrative staff support had been reduced.

• 92% of those using replacement selfservice systems felt that this had added to their workload at the expense of their primary tasks.

• 84% indicated that they were being expected to perform clerical or administrative tasks that used to be performed by staff trained to perform those functions.

• Of those who were undertaking additional administrative tasks:

- 26% said up to 2 hours per week
- 24% said between 2-4 hours per week
- 37% said between 4-7 hours per week
- 13% said more than one day per week

• 94% believed that it was more effective to provide administrative support in the same office than to centralise in back office operations.


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Council right to dump flawed shared services proposal – plan had 'Edinburgh trams' written all over it

Wednesday 31 August 2011


UNISON Scotland tonight (Wednesday) welcomed the decision of West Dunbartonshire Council to opt out of shared services scheme for support services. The plan would have involved considerable upfront investment and disruption, which would have delivered only modest savings - in the unlikely event of targets being met.

UNISON has analysed the full business case for the Clyde Valley Shared Services scheme. There is very little evidence to support the sweeping financial assumptions in the proposal. Savings are based on current delivery models, not the systems that will be adopted in this massive shared services operation. 

There has also been a lack of staff engagement and involvement in the development of the scheme – this is a ‘one size fits all’ solution covering many different Council areas. It is no surprise that individual councils will not think it meets their requirements.

UNISON’s Scottish Organiser Dave Watson said: 
"We are glad that West Dunbartonshire has backed away from taking a risk with people’s services and council taxpayers money.

"This shared services plan was based on a poor business case and flawed assumptions - it had Edinburgh trams written all over it.

"If councils are serious about reform they will engage with their staff before drawing up schemes. Reforms will only be successful when they are driven from the bottom up with the aim of improved services, not from the top down with the aim of meeting cash targets. A proposal developed in darkened rooms without any meaningful staff or trade union engagement was unlikely to stand up to proper scrutiny. Tonight’s decision proves that."


Note to editors:

UNISON Scotland analysis of Clyde Valley Shared Services full business case is at
www.unison-scotland.org.uk/briefings/
b009_BargainingBrief_ClydeValleySharedServicesBusinessCase_August2011.pdf


For further information / comment  contact: 
Dave Watson 07958 122 409, Stephen Low 0795 685 2822




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Clyde Valley shared services

Our latest briefing on the Clyde Valley shared services business case is now available.

Clyde Valley Councils are being asked to make a high risk decision based on a business plan that can only be described as sketchy. They will be committing their councils to an outdated business model with no escape route or capacity to maintain their own democratic accountability. All in return for modest savings that are difficult to evidence. It is simply the wrong approach, at the wrong time, with huge risks for limited returns.

Clyde Valley shared services

We now have the latest excuse for a business case for the Clyde Valley shared services project. Our briefing on the initial business case is on the UNISON Scotland website and sets out a range of concerns. The latest version addresses few of these issues.

The claimed savings are based on some very broad assumptions. Throughout the document there are some very suspicious neat rounded numbers or percentages that give the clear impression that detailed work has not been done. There is also only a limited sensitivity analysis.  A big part of the claimed savings come from 'self-service' delivery systems. Well you don't need a massive shared services structure to introduce this and all it does is to displace support service costs to operational staff. It is therefore a paper saving that takes staff away from service delivery.

Other costings are very optimistic and in particular redundancy costs. They assume only 25% of the staff reductions will be achieved by redundancy. Given lower staff turnover and other factors this is an obvious under estimate. An important factor would be office location, but again the document is very vague about actual locations, referring vaguely to a 'distributed model'. No vagueness about the big budget for 'specialist expertise', or in plain English, consultants. Even with these optimistic assumptions the financial savings are still low for the investment required.

There is no Equality Impact Assessment. Apparently this can wait until April 2012, after the decisions have been made! Same applies to environmental and climate change assessments, statutory duties that are just ignored.

Another key issue is the organisational model. The business case rejects the obvious best solution, a joint board, on the most spurious of grounds. The assessment uses some highly subjective judgements to weight the analysis in favour of a public/public company model. This is despite the strong track record of joint board structures in Scotland (e.g. Tayside Contracts) and the legal problems under procurement law of the other options. They still brush over the VAT and Corporation Tax issues with the company options. A cynic might conclude that this is being done deliberately to push it into the private sector as a second stage operation, claiming 'legal problems'. The main argument against a joint board is the unknown attitude of the Scottish Government. This is frankly bizarre as the Scottish Government has spent £millions trying to get shared services going and is almost certainly going to be supportive.

Possibly the weakest aspect of the business case is the workforce aspect. The document talks about engaging the workforce and even quotes from the Christie Commission report. As the business plan was developed without any staff input this is a bit rich. What the Christie Commission report highlights is the importance of bottom up service design. This proposal is a classic top down, one size fits all plan that ignores staff and service users. If the authors had read all the Christie report this is explained very clearly in s.4.47. 80% of transactions using this type of service delivery model relate to failure demand i.e. sorting out mistakes. Rather than ensuring that when someone turns up for a service they are met by staff who can help them through it.   

In summary, this is simply the wrong approach to service design. Even the private sector panel commented that it has big risks with size and complexity. Councils are asked to take this risk in return for at best modest savings. Even those savings are unlikely to be realised due to optimistic assumptions and cost displacement. This plan has 'Edinburgh Trams' written all over it.

Public service factories are not the key to reforming public services, says UNISON

UNISON, Scotland’s largest public service union, today warned of the high cost of setting up ‘public service factories’ in a bid to save councils cash.

The union said shared services are not providing the answer to modernising public services and warned that services will suffer as a result of the top-down approach to change.

Dave Watson, UNISON’s Scottish Organiser, said: “Co-operation between public services is essential, but that doesn’t mean setting up vast public service factories or bringing in the private sector. Shared services are often pushed by private consultants as a way to improve services and save money. However, these schemes come with huge upfront costs and evidence shows that initial savings are not delivered in many cases – so we would warn against the belief that there is a pot of gold to be released through shared services.”

The drive towards shared services, both within organisations and between them, is based on economies of scale and a view that front and back office functions should be separated. However, there is increasing evidence from the UK and internationally that this approach is wrong. Few services actually delivered in this way have realised the claimed savings and real costs are simply displaced onto frontline services. There is also a massive increase in transactional costs as systems drive activity rather than addressing user demand. UNISON believes services should be organised so that staff who meet users are able to deal with most of their needs, without artificially splitting the work up.

The union has also been critical of the Clyde Valley Review, which has involved no consultation with either trade unions or with the staff who deliver services.

He continued: “Bright ideas are never the result of discussions which take place in a darkened room. For positive changes to happen, managers have to adopt a bottom-up approach and involve staff in decision making.

“Job concerns are sometimes hailed as the reason for shared service failings, however, this is simply not the case. We fully support partnership working and efficient delivery of services, however, we are sceptical as to whether this type of shared service will deliver savings and, most importantly, whether it will deliver a better service.”

See the Briefing at http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/briefings/100611Bargainingbriefingsharedservices.pdf

UNISON comprehensively rejects the Independent Budget Review proposals

Date: Thursday 29 July 2010

UNISON Scotland today comprehensively rejected the Independent Budget Review proposals as an assault on public services that will damage the economy.

Scottish Organiser Glyn Hawker said:

“This is not an attempt to balance the books. It is a major assault on vital public services and it is about opening up profit opportunities for the fat cats.

“The report hides behind a rhetoric of ‘tough choices’ and ‘targeting’, but what these proposals will do is reduce the quality of life for all but the richest, as the services we use are removed or run down.

“Once the Scottish people realise that this means handing over their water service to the bankers, reducing the quality of their child’s education and cutting back on their elderly relatives’ care, they will reject this agenda.”

As well as up to 60,000 job losses, the report includes a range of proposals that run the risk of putting us back into recession.

Glyn added:
“Job losses on this scale will of course hit services. And their insistence on redundancies and pay freezes run the risk of taking us back into recession. With 70p in every pound spent on public services finding its way back into the local economy the programme of mass redundancies and real terms wage cuts will be a real blow to many local economies across Scotland.”

UNISON, the largest public services union, has said all along that the real issue is the kind of services our society wants and how we pay for them. It is wrong for politicians to be willing to make cuts on such a scale, yet not to consider fair taxation. The Scottish Parliament has tax varying powers and the people of Scotland voted for it to have them.

The report suggests the council tax freeze is unsustainable and that is correct, but UNISON would also say it is unsustainable not to look at asking those who can pay more in tax to do so.

Glyn said:
“Cuts on this scale will hit middle and low income families hard and will be especially hard on women. If classroom assistants lose their jobs, mums will be expected to volunteer. They also face cuts in before and after school services that could affect whether they can work.”


UNISON response to the Report’s chapter conclusions and recommendations:

Public Spending Environment
UNISON believes all public services are valuable, and should be ring fenced. Why should the ordinary people of Scotland pay for the bankers’ greed? Let us be clear though - the Independent Budget Review argues for a policy of no protected areas in public sector: this means health and education will face cuts along with the rest of our public services.

Fair taxes and government borrowing remain the most cost-effective ways of funding public spending.


Efficiency
The Review accepts that efficiencies will become ever more "challenging" - and then sets a minimum 2% annual efficiency target. The real agenda however is revealed in the well worn recommendations for shared services arrangements across the public sector; and "mainstream roles" for the private and voluntary/third sectors in the delivery of public services. These are not plans for efficient and effective public services - they are in fact costly and inefficient ways of opening up public services to profiteers.


Remuneration and workforce
The loss of up to 60,000 jobs will have a major impact on services. The proper place to deal with public sector pay is in negotiations. Pay freezes and pay cuts for public service workers will damage economic recovery, and hit local communities and small businesses too. UNISON will continue to campaign for fair pay as inflation rises around 5%.

Flexibility would open up issues of equal pay which we are only now resolving after 40 years of the Equal Pay Act.


Universal services
Introducing charges and means testing to services that currently benefit everyone creates an expensive new bureaucracy. If there is a concern that some people are receiving services they can well afford, the value for money option is to charge them via taxation rather than setting up a ‘department for social insecurity’ to administer charging.


Capital
Scottish Water should remain in democratic control. Setting it up as a ‘public interest company’ would be privatisation by stealth.

An enhanced role for the Scottish Futures Trust is likely to see further wasteful use of private financing for public sector projects. Lessons must be learned from the hugely expensive PFI/PPP projects.


Shaping the future
Scotland’s Parliament should provide leadership by working to fund quality public services and resisting a cuts and privatisation agenda.


ends



Notes to Editors:

1. UNISON responses to the report, including two earlier releases today, are here on our frequently updated blog at: http://unison-scotland.blogspot.com/

2. UNISON’s alternative budget is at: www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/18887.pdf

3. UNISON’s submission to the Independent Budget Review is at: http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/response/UNISONResponse_IndependentBudgetReviewApril2010.pdf



For Further Information Please Contact:
Glyn Hawker, Scottish Organiser (Bargaining & Equal Pay) 07876 441 237
Fiona Montgomery, Communications Officer 0141 342 2877 (o) 07908 672 890 (m)
Malcolm Burns, Communications Officer 0141 342 2877 (o) 07958 063 182 (m)

 
 

Accounts Commission report 'misses the point' - UNISON

Thursday 18 February 

Commenting on today's report from the Accounts Commission on Scottish Local Government, Dougie Black, UNISON's regional organizer and lead negotiator for local council workers said: "It is disappointing that the Accounts Commission seem to have missed the point again.

"Shared services cost money in the short term, they don't save it; cuts to so-called 'back room' service just mean hauling front line workers away from service delivery to cover background work; and 'alternative delivery' means either expensive profit-driven private provision or services provided on the cheap by cutting resources, training, pay and conditions.

"The real question is - why do bodies like the Accounts Commission not talk to the people who use these services - all of us - the people of Scotland. We didn't cause the recession, we didn't drain the public coffers of money to prop up the banks - why should our services pay for that when the bankers who are responsible are still awarding themselves huge bonuses?

"Local Government is already facing cuts of over £300m, and job losses of 3,500 plus. That is why UNISON is running its Public Works campaign, is contacting local communities who depend on these services, and organising a 'Stop the Cuts, March and Rally' in Glasgow on April 10, as the next stage in that campaign."

ENDS

Note for editors:
Details on UNISON's Public Works Campaign are available on http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/publicworks/
UNISON's Alternative Budget can be found at http://www.unison.org.uk/million/resources/Alternative_Budget.pdf


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Relying on Shared Services won’t work - UNISON comments on Local Government Committee finance report

Date: Thurs 28 January 2010


UNISON - the union representing workers delivering local services in the local council and community sector, today said they were concerned that the report by the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government committee published today, seemed to go half way to accepting the myth that shared services would save council’s money in the short term. However the union did welcome some other parts of the report.

Dave Watson UNISON’s Scottish Organiser said:
“Despite incontrovertible evidence in practice that shared services actually cost the public sector more money in the short term, the committee report appears to suggest that these should be used in part to deal with immediate financial pressures on local government. There may be good reasons to share certain services - but immediate cost savings is not one, and the impact on local economies are too often underestimated.”

The union, which represents staff in both the local authority and the community and voluntary sector, welcomed the committee’s warning that freezing workers’ pay levels could be seen as a blunt management tool, and threatened to damage local economies, but said that the lack of a clear recommendation on pay parity between staff in different sectors delivering services was disappointing.

Dave Watson said: “It is clear that the impact of public spending cuts in general and in particular any wage freeze would be damaging for both local and national economic recoveries. We welcome the warning from the committee on that issue, and will be highlighting this in our discussion with local authority employers...

“It is disappointing therefore that the report shies away from recommending fair pay between voluntary sector and local authority staff delivering the same service. Indeed there appears to be some confusion in the report between total pay costs and take home pay.”

UNISON, also welcomed a number of other recommendations in the report, and said they wanted to take part in further debate on service provision.

Dave Watson said: “We are campaigning in our current Public Works campaign for quality, efficient and accountable services. We want to continue the debate with local authorities, the government, and the Parliament. This report, has some positive recommendations towards that end – like the recommendations against outsourcing as a cost-cutting exercise. It is a little disappointing therefore that the relevant trade unions are not mentioned as prospective partners for future discussions.”


ENDS

For Further Information Please Contact:
Dave Watson (Scottish Organiser) 07958 122409 (m)
Chris Bartter (Communications Officer) 0771 558 3729(m)


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