Nottingham City Council Silences Welfare Advice Row
Notts Indymedia | 28.10.2007 18:10 | Social Struggles
It was one of those things that the City Council wouldn't want to kick up a fuss about. After all, it was a controversial decision to merge the city's welfare rights department into the management of the housing benefit service back in September 2006. Employees were only told about the decision 2 or 3 days before it was implemented and were told in an email to 'keep quiet' about the issue. You can imagine people getting concerned over 'conflicts of interest' when you're supposed to get impartial and independent advice on welfare rights from people in the very same office as those authorizing the actual applications.
But thankfully someone decided she couldn't stay quiet over the issue. Sarah Roy, who worked for the council, posted an article on rightsnet.org.uk, a website for welfare rights workers to share information and knowledge. She posted the article in July but the City Council ordered the site to remove the posting instantly or else they would 'seek an injunction in the High Court and sue for damages'. The article was pulled. Another publication, called 'Benefits and Rights' also received legal threats from the council after it told readers it was to feature the issue in its next edition. They ran a 'shortened version' of the article. Sarah Roy was eventually fired over the issue. Read the full article for a second posting Sarah wrote on the Rightsnet forum, which has now also been removed.
Links: Benefits and Work newsletter | Evening Post coverage: (1) (2) | Nottingham City Council | Nottingham Claimants Action (NCA)
Sarah on Rightsnet: (page now removed) "The take-over of our Welfare Rights Service by a benefit provider caused most team members to have real concerns about impartiality, confidentiality etc and clearly compromised our own professional integrity. As union steward, I wanted to challenge the takeover and there was subsequently a group grievance about the decision. I was interested in taking the issue to judicial review. The Union was never consulted about any of this and neither were team members. The decision had been kept from the team for a month (the time between being announced and taking effect), until it had actually taken effect and so this meant there was no opportunity for us to challenge it as a team before it had happened. Staff were told not to speak about the issue (I quote email sent to team) "If you choose to disobey the above instruction I strongly advise you to get your own advice first. If you want my opinion I would definitely say keep quiet". It was never either procedurally or legally challenged by managers (that I am aware of). I believe that this 'order of silence' from management was because the council knew its actions were underhand and would be very unpopular with claimants. The postings were made last September but it has taken this long for them to finally be able to get rid of me. The case will be going to internal appeal and ET and I did promise to keep people posted."
Sarah Roy was fired from her job over the incident. She apparently received a letter threatening her with legal action, even before she had been spoken to by one of her managers.
Notts Indymedia
Comments
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council farce& brave worker stand
30.10.2007 09:44
Well done Sarah,its great you made this stand.
Hope you had lots of support from your union, unison I guess, if not I can recommend the industrial workers of the world www.iww.org.uk.
A friend of mine who is a union rep needed support from the iww to maintain her job, but some of IWW in Nottingham informally helped her.
Please email me & I will try & get you some more support.
In Kirkby Ashfield recently the liberal leader of council has deferred/rejected a $5million bid for council housing in favour of private housing, this lead to large protest by many locals many homeless at ashfield council sick of housing in the area often built on woodland going to people moving in from other areas.
This so called progress was slowed down loads by the tree protest at Mansfield Woodhouse, many of the so called "independent councillors" seem to really support the main parties,in official circles only the red & greens seem to be a thorn in this process.
Johnny
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Under-25 Jobless in 'A London Borough'
23.04.2009 15:44
I think this explains why the acronym NCA was well and truly taken when ECA was active.
I live round the corner from the JobCentre, and am pleased to report that my latest Jobsearch Advisors have awarded us a super pay-rise to be administrated on May 1st; and a holiday period from claiming! May 1st used to be May-Day and is now International Workers' ironically.
BSc (Hons) GradMCIWM
Homepage:
http://www.yahoo.co.uk