“Thats another fine mess you got me into Stan!” – Parking TUPE transfer General Functions Committee Meeting

On Thursday evening UNISON submitted a report in response to the proposal to transfer our members to NSL. You can read our report here

Basically our report sought a delay to the decision to transfer because of our serious concerns about the financial evaluation of NSL which you can read here . UNISON had used NSL latest publicly available accounts and used the Councils own Financial Evaluation criteria. The results were alarming see Appendix C of our report here

Before I was allowed to address the committee I was informed that I couldn’t talk about the serious financial concerns raised in our report. I was only allowed to talk about staffing issues only.  I responded by saying our financial concerns were directly related to staffing issues. Our concerns about the financial evaluation did give cause for concern about the TUPE commitments and the future welfare of our members working on this contract. UNISON was simply seeking an explanation about the outcome of the financial evaluation carried out by the Council on the winning contractor.

Only the two Labour councillors and the Lib Dem Councillor asked any questions, which is quite worrying considering the issues and questions raised in our report which you can read here.

After responding to a number of questions one of the Conservative councillors made a request that the Councils section 151 officer respond to the email ( see Appendix A of UNISON report here) sent by UNISON on 15 March. This was accepted by all councillors. Furthermore it was agreed that the senior officer responsible for Parking respond in writing to all the questions raised by UNISON in our report. This was accepted by all councillors.

Finally a Labour Councillor made a recommendation to defer the decision to transfer the staff until the concerns raised by UNISON had been addressed and reported back to General Functions Committee.

Sadly, the party political battle lines were drawn. The two Labour councillors and the one Lib Dem councillor voted for this recommendation but they were over ruled by four Conservative councillors.

The Committee then voted on the original recommendation to transfer staff to NSL and RR Donnelly.

The vote went as follows

Cllr Scannel, Cllr Thomas, Cllr Rams, Cllr Prentice (all Conservative) voted to transfer staff to NSL

Cllr Farrier, Cllr Hutton (Labour) and Cllr J Cohen (Lib Dem) voted to oppose transfer to NSL.