Secondment versus Joint Employment on Capita Symonds DRS contract

26th July 2013 admin Uncategorised

Over the past two weeks almost 50% of staff working in DRS have been attending what are referred to as ‘joint employment’ workshops. One of the critical proposals of the privatisation of DRS to Capita Symonds are joint employment contracts for the above staff. UNISON is currently carrying out an online survey of our members on this matter, but one consistent question is emerging i.e. “Why not use secondment?”

The responses to this question from staff are that the One Barnet contract is too long for a secondment (it is a 10 year contract with an option for a five years) and the Council has been advised that secondment is unlawful.

In response to this staff have referred to the privatisation of similar services to Capita Symonds earlier this year at North Tyneside Council (see here). This is a longer 15 year contract and secondment was chosen as the employment model for those staff carrying out enforcement.

Staff quite understandably are questioning this legal advice as they believe that joint employment is a much higher risk of challenge of their enforcement decisions by residents and or business than if they were still employed directly by Barnet Council via secondment. Furthermore they do not understand if it is unlawful to second staff to carry out enforcement in Barnet it must be unlawful to do the same in North Tyneside?

The UNSION and staff position on this matter was that we would support secondment as an employment option as we have done for other Barnet staff that are still on secondment beyond ten years

It seems legal advice is very much under scrutiny at the moment.