CUTZ: this week in Bristol and beyond ...
Bristol Citizens | 01.10.2010 19:26 | Public sector cuts
So, there's nothing happening 'til the Comprehensive Spending Review you say?
(Most links deleted to avoid spambots)
Dedicated to Will. He'd know what this means. Shine on.
STRIKE
50 Unison members in leisure centres, country parks and car parking services were out on strike last weekend. Swindon Borough Council have withdrawn extra pay for staff working unsociable hours. This works out at between seven and 14 per cent of the workers' wages.
http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/8414985.Strike_...ntre/
Swindon Unison: unisonswindon@swindon.gov.uk
RUBBERSTAMP
Bristol City councillors have now rubberstamped their plan to cut redundancy payments and pay protection for any redeployed staff (reported last week) as they gear up to make 1,000 staff redundant. The GMB says they will ballot for industrial action on the issue.
The T&G (Unite) and Unison both objected to the plans but seem to be keeping their powder dry on this one. Perhaps they're looking toward even bigger challenges ahead such as the inevitable ConDem assault on local government pensions?
The decision was taken by the council's Human Resources Committee, the star chamber that will be directly responsible for staffing cuts. Its Chair is Lib Dem Steve Comer who also sits on the National Executive of the defiantly left wing PCS union. Quite how he reconciles his two roles is anybody's guess. Also on the committee is Labour's Sean Beynon who owes his seat on the council directly to money and campaigning from the membership of the T&G (Unite). The rest of the committee consists of Tory accountant Geoff Gollop, drippy liberal Fi Hance - who works for drippy Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams - and Lib Dem cabinet member, Mark Wright, a confused working class Tory. Their addresses are online.
BUDGET
Bristol City Council's Cabinet say they are already £2.2 million overspent on this year's budget. It was £5.5m but it has been reduced largely through £3.3m worth of staff cuts branded as "vacancy management". This means low-paid, low-status job vacancies are left unfilled and the staff that remain are worked like dogs by the management to get the work done. Trade unions have yet to find a response to this widespread management tactic.
NHS
The University Hospitals Bristol NHS Trust that runs the BRI is cutting costs by about £18 million this year. That's around five per cent of their budget. Similar cuts are expected at the North Bristol NHS Trust responsible for the Frenchay and Southmead Hospitals. A cost-cutting merger of the trusts is also on the cards in the next few years. Health spending is supposed to be ringfenced from cuts.
The Bristol Evening Post continues to be the local market leader for human interest stories about public service cuts and their effect on the wider public. War veteran Bernard Warren has dementia and terminal cancer and has been assessed by the local NHS as "not being ill enough" for his care to be fully funded under the Continuing Care scheme. Latest news is that he has fallen and broken a hip a day after NHS assessors claimed his risk of falling was too low for him to receive full healthcare funding. NHS Bristol “are sorry to learn of Mr Warren's fall.”
SCHOOLS
Bristol City Council have gone very quiet about the £12m earmarked in March 2009 to refurbish Millpond and Whitehall primary schools. Have these projects been cut?
Buddies, a co-operative providing after-school care at Air Ballloon School in St George has been suddenly shut down due to “financial difficulties”. "[Buddies] risked the school itself getting into financial difficulties,” said the headteacher. No plans have been announced to replace the service.
Welcome to 'Silcon Gorge' the creative industries hub of the UK: this year's Bristol Schools Technology Grant has been slashed by £500,000.
More education cuts are coming soon in Bristol. "Detailed budget plans will be announced in the next few weeks," promises schools boss Annie Hudson.
DEFENCE
Trade Unions are warning that thousands of defence jobs in the Bristol region are at risk as the government embarks on its slash and burn-style defence review. Around 13,000 workers are employed in defence-related jobs in the area and two major aircraft programmes – the A330 refuelling plane and the A400M military transport plane made by Airbus at Filton and Rolls Royce at Patchway - may be targeted.
HOUSING
Bristol City Council will be building just 12 council homes in Lawrence Weston not the 76 homes across a dozen sites promised by the council when the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) awarded the city a £5.3 million grant last year . The council has instead been given £775,690 by the HCA and will need to sell 40 existing empty homes to match fund the grant. There are currently about 18,000 people on Bristol's housing waiting list.
TRANSPORT
Bristol's local transport budget has been being cut by £1.5m
PLACE?
Resturanteur, Mike Bennett, the city council's new 'Director of Place', employed to ‘enhance Bristol’s sense of place’ for £72k a year, has announced that the city needs to promote its quality restaurants better and build some bandstands to attract jobs, money and investment. This view is unlikely to be shared by most mainstream economists.
Thursday found Bennett the subject of a brown-nosing spread in the Bristol Evening Post. Oddly, this highly-paid senior local government officer - who "doesn't do it for the money" - was interviewed in the middle of the day on-site at one of his businesses. Are we paying him to run his business? Or does he have an unusually flexible flexitime arrangement?
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/GIVING-BRISTOL-PRID....html
"TO ME, THINGS ARE WORSE WHEN YOU LIVE ALONE. AT TIMES YOU WISH YOU COULD END IT ALL."
More on the Bristol Older People's Forum report - from last week - that found two-thirds of the residents of sheltered housing think the quality of their lives is worse since their resident wardens were cut to save money.
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Pensioners-life-wor....html
GAG!
Bristol City Council brings in rules trying to gag staff who speak out on the internet from today despite serious concerns from unions and an independent barrister that their actions may be in breach of the Human Rights Act.
SOUTH GLOUCESTERHIRE
South Gloucestershire Council are cutting 33 per cent of their senior managers in an effort to save £2.2 million a year. Between 25 and 30 positions should go in the shake-up. They are also cutting 317 posts in schools – 10 per cent all of non-teaching jobs – to save a further £12 million.
The Conservative-run council has also decided to close its eight old peoples' homes and is abandoning plans to build two new homes. Instead it will spend money leasing the land to a private company to do it.
FoI
Bristol City Council have failed to comply with a Freedom of Information request for performance stats on their controversial and under-fire call centre at Whitchurch. However City Councillor and Cabinet Member Jon Rogers has published some limited stats on Bristol Indymedia.
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/693578?&conden...49831
COCK-UP
The latest Bristol City Council cock-up will cost taxpayers at least £30,000. Avon Coroner, Paul Forrest, who was sacked earlier this year, is now being reinstated because the council failed to follow correct procedures when they sacked him. Once reinstated, Forrest will receive £30k in back pay and be suspended - again - on his full pay of £120k a year. Bristol City Council spends £3m a year on Human Resources 'expertise'.
TOURISM
Much of Weston-super-Mare's tourist industry is to be handed over to a private contractor to save cash from council budgets. North Somerset Council will hand over the running of The Playhouse Theatre, The Winter Gardens and the town's Tourist Information Service to contractor Parkwood Leisure.
THICK THESPIAN
Lib Dem thick thesp, Simon Cook - Bristol museums boss - has instructed everyone to stop moaning about the £72k he wasted on a set of ordinary-looking museum logos from a Manchester design agency because it's upsetting his museum staff. Not as upset as they are about losing their jobs or being downgraded to fill the multi-million pound funding gap his stupid new Museum of Bristol nobody wanted has created, mind.
CHARGES
Bath and North East Somerset Council are imposing a charge of 3% on council tax payments, planning applications and parking permits when a credit card is used. Nice little earner!
BUSINESS
Maskeys the bristol furniture company is to shut down with the loss of almost 90 jobs.
Harvey Nichols at Cabot Circus have announced staff redundancies just days after claiming to have had "double-digit sales growth".
130 workers at Orange in Bristol are to lose their jobs as a result of the merger between Orange and T-Mobile
80 staff working at CPC Packaging in Fishponds have been sent home by administrators appointed six weeks ago.
REDUNDANCY
The GMB claims Sheffield City Council has sent official ‘redundancy notices’ to 8,500 of its staff.
HOUSE PRICE JOY
Wages are stagnant, people are lsoing their jobs but it's alright because house prices are up 9% in Bristol says the Nationwide. That means the huge amount of people who can't get housing in the city are even worse off than a year ago.
September Labour Market profile for Bristol:
http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/1/2038431894/report.pdf
Being made redundant? Problems at work? Being cut? Contact BRISTOL IWW where brothers are doing it for themselves. bristoliww@riseup.net or Tel: 07506 592180
Got any news about cuts in Bristol, Bath or beyond? Send stories, rants, gossip and informed speculation to Cutz, the brashest and best cuts news in the west: bristol_citizens@yahoo.co.uk
SUBSCRIBE by email and get all the news with all the links. Email bristol_citizens@yahoo.co.uk
(Most links deleted to avoid spambots)
Dedicated to Will. He'd know what this means. Shine on.
STRIKE
50 Unison members in leisure centres, country parks and car parking services were out on strike last weekend. Swindon Borough Council have withdrawn extra pay for staff working unsociable hours. This works out at between seven and 14 per cent of the workers' wages.
http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/8414985.Strike_...ntre/
Swindon Unison: unisonswindon@swindon.gov.uk
RUBBERSTAMP
Bristol City councillors have now rubberstamped their plan to cut redundancy payments and pay protection for any redeployed staff (reported last week) as they gear up to make 1,000 staff redundant. The GMB says they will ballot for industrial action on the issue.
The T&G (Unite) and Unison both objected to the plans but seem to be keeping their powder dry on this one. Perhaps they're looking toward even bigger challenges ahead such as the inevitable ConDem assault on local government pensions?
The decision was taken by the council's Human Resources Committee, the star chamber that will be directly responsible for staffing cuts. Its Chair is Lib Dem Steve Comer who also sits on the National Executive of the defiantly left wing PCS union. Quite how he reconciles his two roles is anybody's guess. Also on the committee is Labour's Sean Beynon who owes his seat on the council directly to money and campaigning from the membership of the T&G (Unite). The rest of the committee consists of Tory accountant Geoff Gollop, drippy liberal Fi Hance - who works for drippy Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams - and Lib Dem cabinet member, Mark Wright, a confused working class Tory. Their addresses are online.
BUDGET
Bristol City Council's Cabinet say they are already £2.2 million overspent on this year's budget. It was £5.5m but it has been reduced largely through £3.3m worth of staff cuts branded as "vacancy management". This means low-paid, low-status job vacancies are left unfilled and the staff that remain are worked like dogs by the management to get the work done. Trade unions have yet to find a response to this widespread management tactic.
NHS
The University Hospitals Bristol NHS Trust that runs the BRI is cutting costs by about £18 million this year. That's around five per cent of their budget. Similar cuts are expected at the North Bristol NHS Trust responsible for the Frenchay and Southmead Hospitals. A cost-cutting merger of the trusts is also on the cards in the next few years. Health spending is supposed to be ringfenced from cuts.
The Bristol Evening Post continues to be the local market leader for human interest stories about public service cuts and their effect on the wider public. War veteran Bernard Warren has dementia and terminal cancer and has been assessed by the local NHS as "not being ill enough" for his care to be fully funded under the Continuing Care scheme. Latest news is that he has fallen and broken a hip a day after NHS assessors claimed his risk of falling was too low for him to receive full healthcare funding. NHS Bristol “are sorry to learn of Mr Warren's fall.”
SCHOOLS
Bristol City Council have gone very quiet about the £12m earmarked in March 2009 to refurbish Millpond and Whitehall primary schools. Have these projects been cut?
Buddies, a co-operative providing after-school care at Air Ballloon School in St George has been suddenly shut down due to “financial difficulties”. "[Buddies] risked the school itself getting into financial difficulties,” said the headteacher. No plans have been announced to replace the service.
Welcome to 'Silcon Gorge' the creative industries hub of the UK: this year's Bristol Schools Technology Grant has been slashed by £500,000.
More education cuts are coming soon in Bristol. "Detailed budget plans will be announced in the next few weeks," promises schools boss Annie Hudson.
DEFENCE
Trade Unions are warning that thousands of defence jobs in the Bristol region are at risk as the government embarks on its slash and burn-style defence review. Around 13,000 workers are employed in defence-related jobs in the area and two major aircraft programmes – the A330 refuelling plane and the A400M military transport plane made by Airbus at Filton and Rolls Royce at Patchway - may be targeted.
HOUSING
Bristol City Council will be building just 12 council homes in Lawrence Weston not the 76 homes across a dozen sites promised by the council when the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) awarded the city a £5.3 million grant last year . The council has instead been given £775,690 by the HCA and will need to sell 40 existing empty homes to match fund the grant. There are currently about 18,000 people on Bristol's housing waiting list.
TRANSPORT
Bristol's local transport budget has been being cut by £1.5m
PLACE?
Resturanteur, Mike Bennett, the city council's new 'Director of Place', employed to ‘enhance Bristol’s sense of place’ for £72k a year, has announced that the city needs to promote its quality restaurants better and build some bandstands to attract jobs, money and investment. This view is unlikely to be shared by most mainstream economists.
Thursday found Bennett the subject of a brown-nosing spread in the Bristol Evening Post. Oddly, this highly-paid senior local government officer - who "doesn't do it for the money" - was interviewed in the middle of the day on-site at one of his businesses. Are we paying him to run his business? Or does he have an unusually flexible flexitime arrangement?
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/GIVING-BRISTOL-PRID....html
"TO ME, THINGS ARE WORSE WHEN YOU LIVE ALONE. AT TIMES YOU WISH YOU COULD END IT ALL."
More on the Bristol Older People's Forum report - from last week - that found two-thirds of the residents of sheltered housing think the quality of their lives is worse since their resident wardens were cut to save money.
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Pensioners-life-wor....html
GAG!
Bristol City Council brings in rules trying to gag staff who speak out on the internet from today despite serious concerns from unions and an independent barrister that their actions may be in breach of the Human Rights Act.
SOUTH GLOUCESTERHIRE
South Gloucestershire Council are cutting 33 per cent of their senior managers in an effort to save £2.2 million a year. Between 25 and 30 positions should go in the shake-up. They are also cutting 317 posts in schools – 10 per cent all of non-teaching jobs – to save a further £12 million.
The Conservative-run council has also decided to close its eight old peoples' homes and is abandoning plans to build two new homes. Instead it will spend money leasing the land to a private company to do it.
FoI
Bristol City Council have failed to comply with a Freedom of Information request for performance stats on their controversial and under-fire call centre at Whitchurch. However City Councillor and Cabinet Member Jon Rogers has published some limited stats on Bristol Indymedia.
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/693578?&conden...49831
COCK-UP
The latest Bristol City Council cock-up will cost taxpayers at least £30,000. Avon Coroner, Paul Forrest, who was sacked earlier this year, is now being reinstated because the council failed to follow correct procedures when they sacked him. Once reinstated, Forrest will receive £30k in back pay and be suspended - again - on his full pay of £120k a year. Bristol City Council spends £3m a year on Human Resources 'expertise'.
TOURISM
Much of Weston-super-Mare's tourist industry is to be handed over to a private contractor to save cash from council budgets. North Somerset Council will hand over the running of The Playhouse Theatre, The Winter Gardens and the town's Tourist Information Service to contractor Parkwood Leisure.
THICK THESPIAN
Lib Dem thick thesp, Simon Cook - Bristol museums boss - has instructed everyone to stop moaning about the £72k he wasted on a set of ordinary-looking museum logos from a Manchester design agency because it's upsetting his museum staff. Not as upset as they are about losing their jobs or being downgraded to fill the multi-million pound funding gap his stupid new Museum of Bristol nobody wanted has created, mind.
CHARGES
Bath and North East Somerset Council are imposing a charge of 3% on council tax payments, planning applications and parking permits when a credit card is used. Nice little earner!
BUSINESS
Maskeys the bristol furniture company is to shut down with the loss of almost 90 jobs.
Harvey Nichols at Cabot Circus have announced staff redundancies just days after claiming to have had "double-digit sales growth".
130 workers at Orange in Bristol are to lose their jobs as a result of the merger between Orange and T-Mobile
80 staff working at CPC Packaging in Fishponds have been sent home by administrators appointed six weeks ago.
REDUNDANCY
The GMB claims Sheffield City Council has sent official ‘redundancy notices’ to 8,500 of its staff.
HOUSE PRICE JOY
Wages are stagnant, people are lsoing their jobs but it's alright because house prices are up 9% in Bristol says the Nationwide. That means the huge amount of people who can't get housing in the city are even worse off than a year ago.
September Labour Market profile for Bristol:
http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/1/2038431894/report.pdf
Being made redundant? Problems at work? Being cut? Contact BRISTOL IWW where brothers are doing it for themselves. bristoliww@riseup.net or Tel: 07506 592180
Got any news about cuts in Bristol, Bath or beyond? Send stories, rants, gossip and informed speculation to Cutz, the brashest and best cuts news in the west: bristol_citizens@yahoo.co.uk
SUBSCRIBE by email and get all the news with all the links. Email bristol_citizens@yahoo.co.uk
Bristol Citizens
Original article on IMC Bristol:
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/693634