Sunday 3 November 2019

Transfer News

Despite complaints in some quarters recently regarding the apparent lack of visible activity from Napo HQ, thanks go to the reader for forwarding the following from Napo Cymru and KSS (both edited) :- 

NAPO Cymru AUTUMN NEWSLETTER 2019

The transition of CRC staff to the NPS is still scheduled for 2nd December. While there is the festive holidays, a General Election and other distractions this will be uppermost in the minds of many members. Please read all advice and information coming to you from Napo HQ. 


If you are doing that, you will be aware that Napo is in dispute with the employers regarding T’s and C’s with particular respect to Enhanced Voluntary Redundancy. This emergency motion was passed at the recent Napo AGM in Cardiff: 
‘In light of the General Secretary’s announcement today and bearing in mind the urgency of the intended transfer of staff in Wales on the 1st December this AGM instructs Napo’s Officers and Officials to demand that the MoJ honour the principles in the 2014 Staff Transfer and Protections Agreement for the transfer of staff from CRCs to the NPS in Wales in 2019 and in England in 2021.’ 
Agreement has been reached that any subsequent agreement on the issue will be backdated to the date of transfer, but this does mean that CRC staff transferring to NPS in December will do so on their existing terms and conditions. 

Letters to transferring staff: Staff transferring to NPS from CRC should receive letters confirming this imminently. If you are expecting such a letter, and don’t get one by 4th November, please contact Napo immediately 

Campaign for full reunification: its not over yet Napo continues to campaign for the full reunification of Probation in the public Sector, and the inclusion of all our colleagues in Programmes, Interventions and Unpaid Work. 

Health and Safety: There are important H&S considerations for staff moving to new workplaces: we are endeavouring to ensure risk impact assessments are made in advance of moves, please update reps with concerns.

Commission on Justice in Wales: a rebalancing of Justice with rehabilitation at its heart 


The two-year Commission on Justice in Wales launched its report at the Senedd on Thursday 24th October. Napo Cymru submitted written and oral evidence to the commission. National and branch officers attended the launch and pressed for more attention to be paid to the qualifying training for Probation staff. 

The comparison between this painstaking, principled, evidence-based report and the ideological guff regarding crime issuing from No 10 Downing Street is stark. The MoJ is isolated its stubborn adherence to a marketized justice model, centralised bureaucratic control and building and filling prisons. 

While the report is light on detail regarding Probation, despite one of the commissioners being a previous Probation CEO, there is much to welcome, including recommendations regarding Women’s Centres, Victims, ACE informed practice and a greater investment in. Welsh Government First Minister Mark Drakeford opened the event and also addressed our AGM (see below). In Wales, Probation has many friends and champions You can read the summary of the Commission’s report here and the full report here. 

Napo AGM News 

It was a packed and dramatic AGM conference this year in Cardiff, 11th and 12th October, you can see reports on Napo online and in our magazine. First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford opened the AGM and pledged the support of the Welsh Government for a unified public sector Probation Service in Wales unleashed from the Civil Service. We are fortunate in Wales to have ministers with cv’s which include probation work, and principles and policies that chime with ours.

Welcome to new members! 

At the last count, membership of Napo from Wales had increased by 10% this year. There is a very steady increase in membership across England and Wales. Probation staff are increasingly alive to the need for representation for their own protection, and for heft in the protection of our profession. We were delighted to see so many new Napo Cymru members at the AGM this year. Napo Cymru members worked as stewards at this years AGM, and having worked their socks off doing that, scooped up the unused packed lunches and distributed them to the sadly very evident and numerous street homeless in Cardiff. 

Further AGM News

Serious further offences and workload 

For Napo Cymru, Mairead Finn proposed the motion “This AGM moves that an officer’s Workload Management Tool must be a mitigating factor when in a serious further offence investigation. WMT must be discussed during the Serious Further Offence process and be included in any official documentation or report on the findings of the Serious Further Offence.” 

This was passed unanimously and therefore becomes a campaigning issue for your Union. Napo Cymru proposed (and won) other motions, including a call for an overhaul of the qualifying training, policies which contribute to tackling climate change, and housing and benefits for prison leavers. 

Working for you 

Your reps and officers are working hard in your interests. In addition to national and local negotiations they are lobbying hard (wearing holes in the carpets of both Westminster and the Senedd according to one) and importantly supporting and defending individual members. At the last count, Napo Cymru was working on some 20 individual cases, spanning disciplinary, sickness, redundancy, displacement and grievance procedures. 

Contribute! We have need of additional Napo reps. Please consider offering to contribute your talents: for example, as a Health and Safety rep, you will receive training and as a rep, workload relief and expenses for your time and trouble. Contact your local reps or chairs if you would like to “think about thinking about this”.

We can’t work for you if you’re not joined. Make sure you are paying by direct debit! If you are transferring from CRC to NPS, you must pay your subs by DD. 

https://www.napo.org.uk/SWITCH

--oo00oo--

KSS Staff Transfers to NPS Pay Advances

HMPPS is offering pay advances to our staff transferring to NPS on Sunday 1 December. This is to support you with any potential financial pressure over Christmas that may occur due to the change in pay date, and allow you to re-arrange dates for outgoing finances.

The pay advances will be based on a percentage of net pay. Net pay is the amount of pay remaining after deductions (such as tax and national insurance). Net pay is estimated to be about 65% of gross pay. Gross pay is the salary before any deductions. The salary used to calculate pay advances will be the salary paid by KSS CRC on Monday 18 November 2019.

The pay advance dates and percentage of pay options offered as an advance will be:

Wednesday 18 December 2019 – 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%
Friday 17 January 2020 – 25%, 50% or 75%
Tuesday 18 February 2020 – 25% or 50% 

The advance payment, if requested, will be issued on 18 of the month. The remainder of your pay (where applicable) will be paid on the standard NPS pay date, which is the last working day of the month. 

If you receive an advance payment, your payslip at the end of the month will show your full salary and the advance payment will show as a minus figure. 

We have identified a contact for each business unit, who will collate all the advance payment requests for staff within their unit for each month. One list from each business unit will be returned to a central point in HMPPS for processing. Details of the contact for your business unit, and the internal deadlines, are below, along with the form to be used for advance requests. The form must be completed for each individual month.

2 comments:

  1. "Napo is in dispute with the employers regarding T’s and C’s with particular respect to Enhanced Voluntary Redundancy."

    Oh look, I can post my favourite Andrew Selous quote from June 2015:

    "Under the enhanced voluntary redundancy scheme opened in advance of the transition of the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) to new providers, probation staff were able to apply for voluntary redundancy on the basis that they would leave the service by 31 March 2016. The total cost of these redundancies was £16.4m. All remaining Modernisation Fund monies were awarded to CRCs. Redundancy funding was allocated pro-rata to CRCs based on their size and estimated future staffing requirements.

    As stated in my answer to questions 900, 898, 902 and 901, we have no plans to reclaim any monies allocated to CRCs from the Modernisation Fund; and consequently there have been no discussions with CRCs about this. Contract Management Teams are embedded in each CRC, closely monitoring how all monies are used and robust processes are in place to ensure all expenditure is correctly spent."


    Also, Napo from October 2015:

    "Recently, the Probation Unions have had cause to lodge formal disputes with the National Negotiating Council on account of one of the CRC owners (Sodexo) refusing to honour the terms for Voluntary Redundancy under the National Staff Transfer and Protections agreement.

    Staff were instead forced to choose an inferior voluntary severance scheme at significant financial loss, and in another blatant attempt to sidestep their responsibilities, the contractor has now signalled its intention to ignore the compulsory redundancy policies that transferred with staff on the basis that they had no sight of these in the Pre-share sale data room set up by the MoJ!

    In a letter to the probation unions Under-Secretary of State Andrew Selous has indicated that this is not a contractual matter; a position that is being disputed by the unions who believe that the Minister has been badly advised by his officials. Staff terms and conditions should be honoured and the MoJ should be policing this as part of their contract management."
    ____________________________________

    So, in 2015 HMGovt gave the CRCs ALL of the money to cover "anticipated" EVR costs (allegedly £80m in total). The CRCs pocketed that money. The Govt didn't ask for it back & claimed they had contract managers overseeing the use of the money (really?).

    Sodexo were the trailblazing CRC who disregarded the nationally agreed EVR policy & paid out a fraction of the pot to leavers.

    Q: If HMGovt suddenly decides to stump up *additional* money to honour full EVR payouts to KSS staff, doesn't this set a precedent for retrospective payments by HMGovt to staff in other CRCs who were financially disadvantaged by the greed of the privateers?

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  2. Nah, its just more of the same two-tier napo - too little too late for the sodexo & other CRC staff who were utterly shafted, but there's plenty of protected redundancy money for napo hq staff.

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