Your Choice Barnet – all on hold? Yes? No?

Your Choice Barnet (YCB) has informed us of the potential Legal Challenge from carers/ parents to their proposal to restructure half the service, withdraw weekend enhancements, carry out a benchmarking exercise with the private sector. The challenge now means that YCB will carry out a consultation exercise with parents and carers on their proposals.

UNISON has requested that the voluntary redundancies be put on hold pending the outcome of the of the consultation exercise. We have said that continuing with any of the measures proposed would mean pre-empting the outcome of the consultation exercise. The numbers of redundancies anticipated through voluntary redundancy and throughout come of the first round of interviews carried out for management positions, means that there are an anticipated 27 redundancies (VR and compulsory). This equates to around one fifth of the workforce. Redundancies on this scale mean massive changes, upheaval and stress to remaining colleagues as well as service users. Furthermore it is possible the consultation exercise will revise the new structure and may have meant that people would be inclined to stay.

We have written again stating that setting a deadline of 24th of June as a final declaration of their interest for those wanting voluntary redundancy is not acceptable. Furthermore the letter to staff indicates they have already received their redundancy pay which would be unusual given that the redundancy date first earmarked is first of July.

We have also queried the outcome of the interviews for coordinator roles as it is our understanding almost half the applicants failed to secure a position in the new structure. Therefore the interview process was not about selecting a redundancy, but selecting people out of YCB. This means YCB now has additional redundancy costs as well as expensive recruitment costs. It was not our understanding this was how the interview process would be conducted.