A Quality Service Needs to Pay Quality Wages

The provision of a free at the point of use public childcare service has been a demand of the trade union movement for over a hundred years. Investment in the provision of quality childcare is therefore very welcome. But the service model must be one that closes rather than widens the attainment gap. There is a very real risk that done the wrong way we could make inequality worse rather than better. There is growing evidence that this has been the case following the move to 30 “free” hours per week in England . UNISON’s full response to the consultation is available here.

To be fully effective the proposed expansion of “free hours” in ELC will also require investment in a range of public services not just nurseries. The services also need to work together. This is why it important that all education services including early years are embedded in local authorities where links to social work, libraries, youth work, leisure and cultural services as well as social work, welfare rights, educational psychologists and housing can be best coordinated.

The government consistently state that they are focused on the provision of a quality service. The quality of an ELC services is entirely based on the quality of the staff. Stating that the Living Wage is the minimum pay for the sector contradicts that ambition. It should be shocking that that around 80 per cent of practitioners and 50 per cent of supervisors in partner settings are paid less than the Living Wage . So while the commitment will bring a welcome pay rise for many it is much less than is being paid in the public sector.

UNISON believes that the government has substantial underestimated the number of extra staff needed to meet their ambition but even accepting their figures it will be very difficult to attract sufficient people at that rate of pay. Why would anyone undertake the training (in-work or at college) needed to become an early years practitioner with all the responsibilities, the demands of maintaining professional registration and required ongoing professional development to earn the same rate of pay you could cleaning or in a supermarket?

In the short term the better rates of pay and pensions in the local authorities mean that authorities will be able to fill their current vacancies by attracting qualified staff from other sectors and lower paying authorities. The average earnings for practitioners across the sectors are
• public £28,000
• private £15,000
• voluntary £16,000

A practitioner moving from the private to the public sector is looking at an average wage rise of £13,000 per year plus a final salary pension. A recent report from the National Day Nurseries Association (Scotland ) states that private nurseries currently lose 3 staff per year to the public sector. Lower payers are going to struggle to keep and recruit staff during such a massive expansion According to the Skills Development Scotland report the current vacancy rate is 19% and 35% report problems filling vacancies. This will only get worse without proper pay. Low pay puts the whole expansion at risk.

The evidence is clear that an anti-poverty early learning and childcare service (ELC) needs to follow a supply side model rather than the “funding follows the child” “provider neutral” model laid out by the Scottish government.

As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation state
“international evidence and the best examples of high quality provision in the UK suggest that the most effective approach to funding pre-school childcare is supply side funding, where investment is made directly in services. This approach provides the means to offer universal access to services and effectively shape quality, affordability and flexibility. .....demand side subsidies do not offer the same means to achieve integration and deliver improvements in services. The case for supply-funded childcare is simple. It is the most effective means of delivering reliable access to affordable, flexible and high quality childcare regardless of parents’ ability to pay”

We really want this expansion to work. This could be a life changing investment in public services. There's still time for the Scottish government listen and make the right choices.

Time for coordinated workforce planning

Workforce planning in Scottish local government is largely a local and ad-hoc approach, which is simply inadequate for the challenges created by austerity and will not cope with future demand. It is time to develop a more coordinated approach.

Today, I was giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament's Local Government Committee inquiry into workforce planning. Workforce planning is the process that organisations use to make sure that they have the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time. 

With nine out of ten austerity job losses in Scotland in councils, the impact of job cuts on the workforce has been huge. This is highlighted in UNISON Scotland's damage series of reports in which staff describe the daily stress and plate spinning, which is how they do their best to keep services going.

Added to this we have an ageing workforce, with around 40% of the public sector workforce in Scotland likely to retire within ten years. That has huge consequences for service delivery, particularly in local government. We already have experienced staff retiring, leaving junior staff, often without the necessary skills or knowledge, to muddle through.

In this context you would have hoped that workforce planning would be high on the agenda. In practice workforce planning in Scottish local government is generally very limited, at best local and largely ad-hoc. There is some national discussion with specific professions, or when a recruitment crisis highlights specific difficulties, such as planning. There is little strategic engagement with workforce representatives across the sector.

A current example of short-term thinking is the planned closure of the Master of Public Administration programme at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. This would leave Scotland with one MPA programme. I was in Wales recently and was impressed by their approach, while in Scotland we appear to be relying on others. Where is the next generation of public service leaders going to come from if we close down quality teaching and research programmes?

There are some local plans as well as guidance from CIPD, Audit Scotland and the Improvement Service. However, there is little national coordination, with silo working the most common approach. There have been some early attempts at a national approach in the care sector. Even here with a looming crisis, we are only at the early stages of a challenging process, given the fragmented nature of the service. 

Effective workforce planning requires access to good workforce data. Our experience of collating data shows that councils often struggle to produce even the most basic workforce data. In some councils the data is only held at departmental level and because every council has a different structure, it is very difficult to put together a national picture.

A new approach to workforce planning is required across the public sector, including local government. Service integration means that this can no longer be undertaken in silos. Here are six steps we could take:

Private Sector Fails and the Public Sector Pays Again

Carillion’s board are accused of presiding over a “rotten corporate culture” in a report by two parliamentary committees. The company collapsed earlier this year with £1.5bn of debt leaving the public sector to pick up various public contracts. Rachel Reeves MP said the directors “drove the company off a cliff.”

The joint report, by the Work and Pensions and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy select committees, also criticises the UK government concluding that they lacked the decisiveness or bravery” to address the failures in regulation that allowed Carillion to become a “giant and unsustainable corporate time bomb”.

The bulk of the criticism is pointed at the company’s board who are clearly responsible for the company’s spectacular failure, despite the directors attempt to portray themselves as “victims of a maelstrom of coincidental and unforeseeable mishaps”.

The report calls out the directors’ “recklessness, hubris and greed and describes a business model that was “a relentless dash for cash, driven by acquisitions, rising debt and exploitation of suppliers”. It als suggests that their accounting practices “misrepresented the reality of the business”.
The report also raises questions for the company’s auditors: All of the big four accounting firms (KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst and Young and PWC) had done work for the company and had clearly not provide the degree of independent challenge needed to prevent the problems highlighted in teh report.

The report states that that by failing to question Carillion’s financial judgements and information KPMG complicit in the companies questionable accounting practices. They are accused of “complacently signing off its directors”. “Deloitte was paid over £10m to act as internal auditor but were either ‘unable or unwilling’ to identify ‘terminal failings’. They report also indicates that the lack of completion in the audit market creates conflicts of interests at every turn

This collapse illustrates the risks of outsourcing vital service to the private sector. The risk remains with the public sector who then have to pick up the tab for private sector failures.

Council funding - a step forward, but not out of the woods

The Scottish Budget dance has taken another swirl as the Bill passes its first stage. Let’s have a look at what the changes mean for local government and pay.

First a quick recap. The draft budget proposed no cash increase for local government, which meant a ‘real terms’ cut in council budgets of around £153m. This was in a year when the Scottish Government had a cash increase in its own budget from Westminster of £188m. They also announced a new pay policy, but allocated nothing in the budget to pay for it.

After the Finance Settlement was published with details of individual local authority allocations, councils spotted an ‘accounting error’, which after the government correction resulted in a number of winners and losers.

On the day of the Stage 1 debate this week, the Government announced that an agreement had been reached with the Greens to support the budget, in return for an additional £159.5m of revenue funding. No repeat of last year’s padding the numbers by mixing capital and revenue. They also improved the pay policy by extending the 3% band to those earning up to £36,500. It remains at 2% for those earning above that.

Dealing first with the revenue funding, this roughly means that councils are now getting a standstill budget in ‘real terms’. However, that does not mean there won’t be more cuts in the coming year. 

That’s because ‘real terms’ means an assumption that inflation will be 1.4% next year. No one really believes this will happen, certainly not a prudent council finance director. The OBR has forecast that the CPI will be 2.4% next year and the RPI 3.3%. Pay alone, which is 55% of the budget, will be around double the government’s inflation assumption according to the pay policy.

Then there will be the usual round of ‘unavoidable commitments’. These include demographic change, which IJBs alone calculate at 2% per annum. Most IJBs are already reporting big shortfalls in their planned budgets for next year and will be looking for additional financial support. Not helped by the £66m allocated for the living wage and other new care duties only being ‘support’, not the full cost.

COSLA calculated all these demands at 2.6%, plus 3% for a realistic inflation estimate. That’s where their £545m figure comes from, which was the basis for Scottish Labour’s budget proposal.

That leaves pay. Does the revised budget meet the Scottish Government pay policy, let alone the trade union side claim?

A 3% pay increase costs councils around £210m. As pay makes up around 55% of the revenue budget, £88m of the new money is for pay. Then councils can increase the council tax by 3% raising £77m, which by the same proportions is £42m for pay. That’s a total of £130m, or a shortfall of £80m. They could of course meet the cost by spending almost all the new money on pay, but that leaves almost nothing for inflation and those unavoidable commitments.

Councils also have less flexibility in other areas. They can increase charges again, but the income is dropping off every year they do this, quite apart from the regressive nature of many charges. Councils took £79m from their reserves last year, not something they can continue to do.

In summary, the extra money is very welcome and makes a significant contribution to the draft budget shortfall. It also means that local government is suffering as badly, but not much worse (this year at least), as other departments outwith the protected spending areas. However, it still means an underfunded pay policy and service cuts.

Behaviour in Schools

The Scottish government published a lot of education statistics last week so the report into behaviour in schools didn’t get much coverage. Which is a shame because its important. What the report tells us is that cuts, particularly to classroom assistants and to specialist support staff, are creating problems in school when it comes to maintaining positive behaviour. This substantial report backs up what members told UNISON during our survey of school staff at the beginning of the year.

The new report finds that there has been an increase in low-level disruptive behaviour since 2012. Staff also reported that it is this type of disruptive behaviour that has the biggest negative impact on their experience in schools.

Head teachers, teachers, support staff and pupils all agree that there is a clear link between having sufficient support staff in a classroom and positive behaviour in that classroom. Staff also felt that the reduction in support staff combined with growing numbers of pupils with ASN had resulted in a shortage of one-to-one support for pupils and a wider negative impact on behaviour.

Again in line with UNISON’s research, it is clear that support staff do not have enough time for discussions with class teachers about pupils or involvement in whole school discussions about behaviour and relationships in schools. Headteachers also indicated that cuts in non-school based support for pupils with additional needs are also impacting on the level of support available to pupils. It is also clear that when resources in schools are stretched in general then that has an impact on other aspects of school life which could promote positive behaviour.
The report also states that

“There is also scope for improvement in relation to: ensuring that support staff feel valued, communication and training”

Earlier in the year our members told us the feel undervalued and the lack of time, lack of resources and heavy workloads mean they are struggling to maintain standards for pupils in Scotland. Things like the Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland only including teacher numbers doesn’t help. This year they have added the numbers of early years workers with or working towards degrees but no numbers for those with other qualifications. Not counting these staff seems indicative of an attitude that these workers don’t count. The Behaviour in Schools report shows that they do.

We need to invest in and value the whole school team if we want to give pupils the best chance of succeeding.

School Infrastructure: Minister's Response to the Parliamentary Report

The Minister for Local Government and Housing, Kevin Stewart has now responded to the Education committee’s report into school infrastructure following the Cole Report. The Cole report was the result of an investigation into the collapse of a wall at Oxgangs primary school and the subsequent closure of 17 other schools.

UNISON evidence to the committee is available here. The remit of the Cole inquiry included

Reasons for the wall collapse
Use of private finance for the building work
The Council’s role in providing quality assurance of buildings

The Education Committee made a range of recommendations and the Minister has now responded laying out the Scottish Government plans going forward: He writes that the government will soon produce new procurement guidance for all public bodies and the Scottish Futures Trust. This new guidance will also include guidance on how public bodies can be “intelligent customers”.

Sadly they have not accepted the committee's recommendation that the route to quality assurance is through ensuring that public bodies employ a Clerk of Works for every capital project. The minister states that there are a range of methods but that guidance will identify "the critical value that a Clerk of Works role can bring to a projects but will also identify the conditions where a Clerk of Works may not be the optimal approach" There is also a plan for new research to support a review of what “reasonable inquiry” means and how local authorities can undertake them in their role as "intelligent customers".

The Minister states that has written to all authorities indicating that they must ensure that buildings no longer come into use without the appropriate building warrants. He has reminded them of their power/responsibilities and that they risk losing their verifier status if they do not use these powers.

Building standards teams will now be tasked with promoting their role as verifiers to the public and promote the Scottish government guidance. If responses to UNISON’s survey of our members in building standards are anything to go by this is the sort of thing they keeps them away from their central role of ensuring the safety of buildings and building work. They are building professionals not marketing/pr people. The teams are already overworked. There is no indication in the ministers response of any extra funding for local authorities to enable them to meet these requirements.

The Education and Skills Committee also recommended working with stakeholders including trade unions to improve training for construction workers and ensure we have enough properly trained skilled construction workers. UNISON is disappointed that the Minister’s letter refers to meetings and discussions with SBF, SQA and CITB but not with any trade unions.

UNISON report into the impact of cuts in Building Standards teams shows how much pressure they are under to maintain a high quality service.

• Almost half (48%) said there have been budget cuts this year while one in five (20%) said the cuts had been severe.

• There are 56 less staff working in Building Standards departments now than in 2010.

• The overwhelming majority (89%) feel their workload has got heavier in the last few years.

• Almost half (47%) felt they should spend a lot more time on site visits while just 13% felt they had the right balance between site visits and office time.

• Nearly 40% work unpaid hours ‘now and again’ while over a third (37%) work unpaid hours most weeks.

• 48% described morale as low, with over three quarters (78%) saying they don’t expect it to improve as a result of budget cuts, increased workload and lack of a pay rise.


Building standards play a vital role in ensuring public safety. There needs to be adequate funding and staffing in order to ensure they can undertake that role.

Council elections - keep it local

As the local government election short campaign gets under way – let’s keep it local.

 

Local government elections will be held for every seat in Scotland on Thursday 4 May. The first reminder is to make sure you are registered to vote. Changes to the system means that a lot of people have been missing from the register. If you haven’t received a polling card by now, you are probably not registered. It’s easy to do this online at https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote, but it has to be completed by 17 April.

 

The second reminder is that these are local elections. The councillor you elect will make important decisions about local services including schools, social care, roads, libraries and much more. While I am not naive enough to believe that national issues don’t impact on local elections, I get very irritated when leaflets arrive through the door with the local issues relegated to an afterthought. – I bin them.

 

UNISON Scotland has published its manifesto for the election. There are some general themes around fair funding and the importance of keeping services local, as well as more detailed ideas around individual services. We will be highlighting some of these, and the people who deliver them, during the campaign because we all tend to take these services for granted.

 

I take some comfort from a poll we commissioned from Survation this month that voters do care about local services. Public services are the top priority for voters (70%); and half of all voters chose the public sector as the best to deliver our public services, only 19% chose the private sector and 13% chose charities. This included Conservative voters with only 31% saying the private sector and 10% saying charities are the best place to deliver public services.

That’s a clear message to council candidates from all parties that people in Scotland want high quality services, delivered by public sector staff. That doesn’t preclude other service providers, but in-house staff should be the primary means of delivering public services that are accountable to the public.  

There was also support for keeping services local, with the council being the most trusted deliverer of local services. Voters also wanted more of their taxes spent locally. They also recognised that the cuts have had a serious impact on the quality of public services. Hardly surprising when nine out of ten jobs lost in Scotland’s public sector since the austerity cuts have gone from local government.

We will be providing some useful questions for candidates in the coming weeks. So if a candidate chaps on the door - start by asking them, not what they have been told to say by central office, but how they will be standing up for local services. Keep it local.

It's Public Services Stupid

Public services are the top issue for the vast majority of Scottish voters.

We are publishing a full scale poll, undertaken by Survation for UNISON Scotland, that asked voters to tell us their priorities for the local government elections. Public services were the top priority followed by the economy and job security.

The results were clear over 70% of those who took part place public services as one of the three most important issues facing them and their families ahead of the upcoming election. The economy was second chosen by just over fifty percent (51%) of respondents and job security and availability came in third with 40%. There was very little variation when results were broken down by party affiliation with public services coming highest among all party voters. Jobs came second for SNP voters while the economy was second for Conservative voters equal numbers of Labour voters picked jobs and the economy.

Voters were also clear about whom they believe delivers the best quality services. Half of all voters chose public sector organisations with only 19% supporting the private sector and even fewer (13%) choosing charities. Even amongst Conservative voters only 31% picked the private sector and 10% charities. UNISON hopes that candidates from all parties are now clear that the people of Scotland want high quality publically delivered services.

Trust and accountability are important issues in a democracy. The polling figures indicate that people trust publically delivered services and believe them to be more accountable than private of charitable delivery: 71% of respondents believed public sector organisations are accountable for the services they deliver while for charities and the private sector the scores were 52% and 44%. Our survey reveals low levels of trust towards politicians and the media. Only 27% of respondents stated that they trust Holyrood politicians as sources of information about public services and 42% stated that they distrusted them. Only 20% trust the media with 47% stating that they distrust the media. Trade unions remain a relatively trusted source of information with 32% only topped by “friends and family” and academics. Friends and family are by far the most trusted source of information on public services (72%), academics achieved 56%. Academics were only distrusted by 11% of respondents.

Budget cuts are having a serious impact on local services: only 6% of respondents believed that services have improved in recent years and a further 30% that they had stayed the same while 59% felt they had declined. When asked where they blame lay 26% blamed local councils, 35% the government and 36% blamed both. SNP voters were the least likely to blame council alone but even then it was still 23%, with 36% of Conservative voters blaming the council and 30% of Labour voters. Nearly half of respondents want more of their taxes to be spent in their local areas and councils were the body most trusted to deliver local services with 41% picking the council and only 8% the government and 12% private companies. The poll summary is available here and tables here.

The poll clearly shows that people value public services, that they want them delivered in the public sector and that they want them delivered local by their council. UNISON agrees.

Tough Times in Local Government

I love the language used in Audit Scotland reports: careful, understated accountant speak, a marked contrast to the often heated excitement of blogs and social media. This report is no exception: “performance and challenges” doesn’t sound scary but if you rely on local services, if your children are in school or if you work there the information in the report is very scary indeed.
Audit Scotland highlight a number of different “challenges:”

New policies and legislation mean big changes in the way things have to be done and a growing number of over 75s is driving demand for care services. All this must be achieved not with new funding to meet demand, to smooth transition but a cut of over 9% revenue funding since 2011.

Don’t worry there are plenty of people there to share the workload....

Sorry my mistake a lot less people...

To be fair some of these people work in ALEOs but we won’t know how many until Audit Scotland report back later in the year. Over a decade of ALEOs with no real national scrutiny.

But here’s a final image feel free to share it when people try to tell you there haven’t been cuts in local government budgets.

The full Audit Scotland report is available here

Council budget cuts - cutting through the spin

This year’s local government budget allocation has been subjected to even more political spin than usual. So here is my attempt at a bit of clarity.

The war of words in the Scottish Parliament chamber is about the Scottish Government’s draft budget and how much they have allocated to local government. That is a very important part of any council’s finances, but it isn’t the whole picture. 

Lets start with the Scottish Government’s budget allocation to local government. The 2017-18 draft budget will cut the local government budget by £327m.  

The detail of that is set out in parliament’s independent information service report and this chart shows very graphically how badly local government is hit. 

COSLA also fairly put local government funding into context when they say:

”The financial facts are straightforward on this matter:

• In 2017/18 the revenue settlement for Local Government fell by 3.6% (£349m)
• In 2017/18 Local Government’s share of the Scottish budget fell from 30.6% to 29.7%
• LG Revenue Funding as a share of SG funding has decreased by 3.7% (£1bn) between 2010/11 and 2017/18 

Make no mistake the Scottish Government has a political choice here and with additional cash of £418m for next year there was no need for such a drastic cut to Local Government.”

The Scottish government responds to attacks about cuts to local government budgets by listing funding for their key policy initiatives for example:

• £120m for pupil equality scheme 
• £140m for energy efficiency 
• £47m to mitigate the bedroom tax 
• £470m for capital funding for housing 
• £107m social care funding 

Worthy though this spending is, it has little impact on the £327m budget cut. This is because this money is ring-fenced – it’s to pay for new initiatives and so can’t be used to plug the gap caused by the budget cut. The pupil equality scheme will go straight to schools; the social care funding is to pay for the living wage in social care, much of which is provided by the third and private sectors. Capital funding doesn’t pay for day-to-day services and so on. 

The one additional source of revenue that the Scottish Government can fairly refer to (although not include in their budget) is the £111m extra revenue generated by changing the council tax bands. In addition, any council that decides to increase the council tax (capped at 3%) will also generate real income (up to £70m nationally) that will mitigate the budget cut. 

I think councils should use these powers to mitigate austerity. I understand the argument that the Scottish Government is not increasing its basic rate of income tax, but expects councils to increase the basic rate of council tax. However, as my old gran used to say, ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ – councils should not be the local  ‘administrators of austerity’.

Even this additional council tax funding will vary council by council, depending on their housing mix. For some authorities the number of households paying more tax will outweigh those paying less through the changes to the council tax reduction scheme. In other councils with a higher proportion of low-income families and fewer expensive homes, the picture will be more challenging. 

When UNISON branches sit down with their council finance directors they will find the reality of the local budget bears little relationship to the claims made in parliament. 

The council budget starts with their allocation (in itself controversial) of the Scottish Government cuts, mitigated by the extra council tax revenue and other modest income sources. Then they will be faced with what are described as ‘unavoidable commitments’. This year the biggest of these is likely to be the Apprenticeships Levy and it is as yet unclear how much of that money, if any, will come back to local authorities to support their apprenticeship schemes. In fairness, some of the ring-fenced grants will obviate some of what would have been unavoidable commitments, like the social care living wage costs. The result of this calculation will be budget deficit.

In conclusion, the finance minister’s spin simply doesn’t match the budget reality on the ground, but opposition parties also have to accept that there is some mitigation. However, the net result will be a big cut in the real budget for every local authority, although the scale will vary between councils. This will result in service cuts and even more job losses. 

Local government and voting

The turnout in local government elections has been declining for a number of years. That's unlikely to change until we reinvigorate local democracy.

Today, I was giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament Local Government Committee's inquiry into local government and voting. There was a useful discussion of short-term initiatives to improve registration and voting. However, there was also a recognition that wider local government reform was needed to re-engage voters.

In the short-term, there is much that civil society, including trade unions, are doing to encourage registration, postal voting and greater engagement in the political process. Like others, we have found the traditional hustings less engaging than smaller tabletop discussions. As with other council services, registration sections are having to retrench to the statutory basics. None the less there are examples of best practice, such as staff working with schools to register young voters, that could be expanded, if the funding was made available. 

Creating more of a local media buzz around elections would help, although I am less convinced about the merits of the rapidly disappearing posters on street furniture. Schools are doing positive work through modern studies, but this is not consistently applied across Scotland in a crowded curriculum.

Political parties could do more to ensure their candidates are more representative of the electorate. Most obviously in terms of gender, with only 25% of councillors being women. There is also a shortage of working age councillors and more could be done to encourage employers to view civic engagement as something to be valued. 

The size of councils in Scotland, the largest in Europe, is also a problem. It means they are more remote from the electorate and seem less relevant to local issues. The turnout in some European countries with much smaller councils, based on real communities is impressively high. It also means people would be more willing to contribute their time to participate in local democracy as voters, engaged citizens and stand for election. Being a councillor shouldn't always be a full-time role.

Another relevant feature of councils in Europe is that they are often unitary authorities, responsible for almost all local services. In Scotland, we have an array of public bodies and quangos, only loosely brought together through community planning. We have also seen ever greater centralisation, with powers removed from councils and ministers taking greater powers of direction. With powers spread amongst so many decision makers, many at national level, it's not hard to see why people feel disengaged. 

Democracy is about more than voting every four years. Councils can do more to meaningfully engage with their communities. A range of initiatives from citizens juries to participatory budgeting have been tried, with mixed success. I suspect that won't change until people believe they have real power to effect change in their communities.

So, in the short-term we can take action to improve registration and postal voting, by resourcing councils with the active support of civil society. However, in the longer term we have to respect local democracy, with councils that have the powers to effect real change, working with citizens from the bottom up. Only then will more voters deem local elections important enough to fully participate.

Police Scotland, Reform Scotland and reforming Scotland’s policing

Mon 25 July 2016

We don’t often say nice things about Reform Scotland. They have a tendency to favour minimal public services, the play of the free market handing things to the private sector, all a bit grimly Thatcherite for our tastes. Upon hearing that they have published a new report, reaction in these parts is more likely to be “Oh dear” rather than “Oh really”.  So when we looked at their latest publication about Policing in Scotland – it was a pleasant surprise to see that it made a great deal of sense.

The report is a précis of the evidence Reform Scotland are submitting to the Scottish Government’s consultation on Policing priorities for Scotland. They chime admirably with many of UNISON Scotland’s own observations and criticisms of Policing in Scotland over the last three years.

We have been highly critical of the way Police Scotland has been set up and run over the last numbers of years.  Centralisation, an arbitrary target for uniformed officers and a demand for cash savings have not delivered the police service that Scotland deserves.

Reform Scotland agree with us that the (thankfully now dropped) 1000 extra officer target has done policing no favours. They are also critical of the ‘one size fits all’ model of policing priorities that UNISON members have been reporting since the setting up of Police Scotland.  They attribute at least some of this to the removal of any local authority role in the governance of Police Scotland and the weakness of the Scottish Police Authority(SPA).     

These are concerns we have expressed repeatedly –  not least the weakness of the SPA. This quango  lacks the capacity to hold Police Scotland to account in any significant sense,  with local engagement a particular failing.

Reform Scotland’s proposal is for representatives from every council to sit on the board of SPA, and councils to be involved directly funding the police. Specifically they suggest monies to come from central and local government on a more or less 50/50 basis.  At this point the proposals are starting to reach the point that civil servants in Yes Minister would describe as ‘ambitious’.  Having 32 local authorities represented with whoever else needs  to be accommodated would make for a pretty big board. And local government funding is arguably under enough uncertainty at the moment. But nonetheless whether or not these ideas represent the ideal solution, their can be little argument that Police Scotland needs a more local approach and better funding.

The other thing this report shows is that criticism of the current set up is coming from all parts of the political spectrum, and on a similar range of issues.  Time for a change.

See also UNISON Scotland website Police page:
http://www.unison-scotland.org/service-groups-and-sectors/police/

and our latest briefing on Police Best Value:
http://www.unison-scotland.org/2016/07/06/briefing-079-bargaining-police-best-value-july-2016/

Health and Wealth

The importance of social capital and involving people in decisions making have been highlighted as key issues in explaining why people living in cities like Liverpool and Manchester have much better health than those living in Glasgow. These cities, like Glasgow, have been through deindustrialisation and experience similar levels of poverty and inequality yet Glasgow has 30% excess for premature mortality and 15% excess for deaths of all ages.

The latest report from Glasgow Centre for Population Health: History, Politics and Vulnerability in Scotland and Glasgow is an important piece of work and anyone one looking at public sector reform in Scotland should be studying it in detail in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Key features of Scotland’s health problems
Excess mortality compared with the rest of the UK
• is seen all over Scotland but it is greatest in the West of Scotland and in particular Glasgow
• It is increasing
• It exists across all social classes
• It exists for a broad range of causes of death but key issues for premature mortality are death from alcohol, drugs and suicide and for excess death at all ages from cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The figures are startling: In 2011-12 the “excess death for alcohol related disease was 2.3 times higher for Glasgow than for Liverpool and Manchester and 70% higher for suicide.

It has been clear for some time that poverty and inequality impact on health outcomes but the problems in Scotland and Glasgow in particular are more complex. The differences in poverty and deprivation no longer explain the mortality gap between Scotland and the rest of Britain. In other cities like Liverpool and Manchester where the population has and is experiencing poverty, inequality and deindustrialisation (and are at the wrong end of England’s health outcomes tables) people do not have health outcomes similar to Glasgow and Scotland.

The report’s finding indicate that Scotland’s population and Glasgow’s in particular have been “made more vulnerable” to the impact of poverty, inequality and deindustrialisation.

Key issues
• Lagged effect of historical levels of deprivation: Glasgow has had notably higher levels of overcrowding from at least the middle of the twentieth century
• Impact of the New Town programme: these programmes relocated younger skilled workers and their families and encouraged growth of “modern lighter industries” away from Glasgow. The policy focus was therefore not on investing in Glasgow but in getting people out of it.
• Glasgow undertook substantially large slum clearances and building demolitions with a greater emphasis on creating within city peripheral social housing estates, more high rise development and much lower per capita investment in housing repairs
• Moving on to the 1980s: Glasgow prioritised inner city gentrification and commercial development whereas Manchester and Liverpool reacted to cuts differently. In particular the city level response in Liverpool was one of building participatory models of development leading to a focus on building new council houses and public amenities.
• The report found high levels of social capital (strong community ties) in Liverpool
• The team speculate that Manchester’s greater levels of ethnic diversity may also have been helped them withstand the effect of poverty and deprivation.


Implications for policy

The key point the report emphasises is that economic policies “matter for population health” and that if we are to improve Scotland’s health then we need to address three issues simultaneously
People need to be protected from poverty and deprivation
Work needs to be done to address the existing problems and mitigate against future vulnerabilities caused by the cuts to public services particularly though not exclusively social security.
Importantly Scotland while mitigating the impact is important reduce the inequalities in income and wealth are essential to narrowing health inequalities within Scotland.

Recommendations are grouped under four headings and detailed examples are included in the report.

Scottish Economic and social policy
The report urges all opportunities are taken to redistribute income and wealth across Scotland: including measures relating to ownership of capital, income and corporate taxation, wealth and asset taxation, and fair work.

Housing and physical environment
Examples include expanding the social house building programme and extending the Scottish Housing Quality Standard
Targeting cold and damp housing

Local government actions
Local government is encouraged to recognise impact of local decision making on population health. The report emphasises the role of local government plays in redistributing resources towards areas of greater need and so questions are raised about whether to review boundaries and/or the funding allocation for local government. A poverty proofing approach to local government policy making is also recommended

Understanding deprivation
As ever they call for further research on the nature and experience of deprivation in Scotland

This is an extensive and important piece of work which should inform the process of public sector reform in Scotland. The finding indicates the value of community involvement in developing their own solutions. This means also challenging the role of “experts” making plans on what they think is best. This of course can be a challenge to and for policy makers, politicians and of course professional advisers on policy.

Public services in Scotland are reorganising and refocusing in response to both budget cuts and changing demands. We can’t afford to keep getting it wrong, as this report shows lives are at stake.

Library Troubles

The BBC has published details of its investigation into the impact of budget cuts on our libraries. The report contains data from FOI requests to local authorities. It contains details from responses from 207 councils across the UK.It's not a positive picture.

• 343 libraries have closed
• A further 111 are planned this year
• The number of paid staff working in libraries has dropped by 25%. That’s 7933 less people than in 2010

Many libraries are only providing a service because community groups and volunteers have stepped in to keep them open. There are now 31,403 unpaid volunteers (a change from 15,861 in 2010). Having volunteers, is though, no replacement for the kind of services a professionally qualified librarian provides.

Library closures have been fewer in Scotland but the number of paid staff working in libraries has still fallen. With the upcoming cuts to local government budgets we believe that the worst is yet to come unless we can run effective campaigns against the cuts.

Glasgow hasn’t yet closed any libraries staffing levels have dropped from 360.1 to 287. Volunteer numbers have increased from 64 to 91
Edinburgh has again maintained building and mobile service numbers but staff numbers have dropped from 315 to 295. Volunteer numbers have increased from 239 to 258
Dundee again no actual closures but staff numbers have fallen from 117 to 102
West Dunbartonshire has closed two libraries/mobile libraries and staff numbers have fallen from 85 to 60
East Renfrewshire has closed no libraries but staff numbers have fallen from 67 to 52
North Lanarkshire no closures staff numbers have dropped from 344 to 305
The article allows you to find the results for your own local authority by clicking here

You can read UNISON's report on the impact of cuts on libraries
and our submission on why libraries matter here

Under Pressure

The latest Audit Scotland report on local government: An overview of local government in Scotland 2016, does not make for cheery reading. Revenue funding is now 11% lower than 2010/11 at a time of increasing demand. The report points out that, so far, councils have focused on “incremental savings to existing service” but with more cuts in the pipeline “councils should be evaluating options more significant changes to delivering services”
This confirms, albeit in management speak, what UNISON has been saying: that salami slicing is no longer an option and that without increased funding local government will no longer be able to deliver its current level of services.

The report confirms that savings have been made through job cuts and that more are planned due to the “significant funding reductions to come” and again confirms UNISON’s concerns about the impact of the loss of skilled staff on service delivery now and in the future:
The report calls on authorities to ensure that they have
“people with the knowledge, skills and time to design develop and deliver effective services in the future”
Public satisfaction with services is already dropping as the cuts begin to bite.

Key financial pressure on local government

Funding reductions
Increasing pensions costs
Reduced financial flexibility
Equal pay and the living wage

Key service pressures
Increased demand through demographic change
Health and social care integration
Service performance
Staff reductions

Local government delivers essential services across Scotland and requires adequate funding. The Scottish Government needs to ensure that local government is funded properly to meet the priorities the Scottish Government sets for it (e.g. expanding childcare hours, teacher numbers) and has access to raise money locally through fair taxation to meet their own local priorities

The report contains lots of useful information for UNISON campaigns against cuts and a self assessment tool for councillors to support them in their work. This is a useful tool for branches in analysing management plans and will be added to the UNISON anti-cuts toolkit.

The Scottish Budget and those job losses

In recent days there have been many political exchanges over job losses as a consequence of the cuts to council grant allocations in the Scottish Budget for 2016/17. Let’s look at the issue calmly.

John Swinney’s view is that job losses have been “utterly exaggerated”. Christina McKelvie MSP says, “But there are not 1,000’s losing jobs, that’s just made up”.

The most widely quoted estimate for job losses is 15,000. This figure doesn’t come from the trade unions; it comes from COSLA. They do after all after access to most of the councils and their senior officials that actually have to deliver the cuts. I am not a party to their calculations, but it is clear that they are based on the consequences of both the grant allocation cut and the additional unavoidable commitments councils have to finance next year. 

What we do know for certain is the combined General Resource Grant + Non-Domestic Rates Income figure, which is used to calculate local government’s total revenue settlement, falls by 5.2%, or more than £500 million, in real terms (the equivalent figure in cash terms is a reduction of 3.6%, or £349m). We don’t know the sum total of the additional commitments, although the largest element is likely to be the increase in National Insurance contributions that COSLA estimates at £125m. That alone takes the cash cut to £474m, but in practice it will be much higher when you take account of other service pressures.

If we look back historically, SPICe calculates that the local government budget fell by 6% between 2008/9 and 2015/16. We also know that local government employment during that period fell from 314000 to 244,800 (latest figure). Allowing for police and fire transfers that means at 42,400 jobs were lost during that period. We generally round that figure down to 40,000.

It isn’t a linear calculation to say a 6% cut equals 40,000 job losses, but it does give you an idea of the scale of the employment challenge when councils are facing at least a 5.2% cut in the coming financial year.

The reason no one can give a precise figure is because councils will use a variety of measures to make the cuts. Some will use reserves or other financial instruments to mitigate some of the cuts. Some service cuts are more staff intensive than others, although council services by their nature are staff intensive. The proportion of the budget that constitutes staff costs depends on how you calculate total expenditure, but a rough figure for most councils would be around 60%.

From local budget consultations that have taken place, we do have some idea of job losses. Several councils have provided estimates although they should be used with caution given that they depend on negotiations and other savings assumptions, including cuts in terms and conditions. However, some 8000 job losses have been identified so far and we expect that number to grow as budgets are finalised.

So, are the job loss estimates ‘utterly exaggerated’. Historical precedent would say they are not. At best you could say they might be less than 15,000. Our more optimistic estimate has been 10-12,000 and those may not all be implemented the coming financial year. Our estimates have proved to be fairly accurate in the past, but there are too many variables at present to be sure. We can be pretty certain that the number will be many thousands - so I’m afraid Christina McKelvie needs a reality check.

The bottom line is this. If anyone can explain how you can cut over £600m from council budgets, when 60% of spending goes on staffing, without job losses – then I would love to hear from them. Our local government members across Scotland would be delighted to see that magic trick.

A Way to Build an Anti-poverty Childcare Service

We are a long way from Scottish and UK governments being able to actually deliver on their promises of a 30 hour childcare service free at the point of use so it’s great to see Joseph Rowntree Foundation publishing a plan to enable actual delivery.
The cost of childcare is a substantial barrier to work for many parents and the lack of availability and complexity of both finding childcare and funding support make it even more difficult. For many families childcare is their single biggest monthly bill.

The new report calls for a simplified childcare system which focuses on tackling poverty. Currently childcare subsidies are extremely complex: supply side via “free hours” alongside the childcare element of tax credits, employer supported childcare vouchers and the tax free childcare scheme. Finding and accessing care is equally complex. There is no one place to go to even find out what’s available far less to apply for a place. Many parents struggle to access the current “free hours” entitlement never mind childcare that matches their working hours even if they can afford to pay.

The Rowntree report calls for a move to a “supply side” funding. Evidence suggests that this is the most effective way to fund a childcare service and means we can ensure quality, affordability and flexibility for all children regardless of their parents’ ability to pay. In terms of Scotland this could also mean more childcare funding could be devolved to the Scottish Government to invest in delivering on their promise.

If childcare is to be effective in reducing poverty and the impact of poverty on children then the focus has to be about more than reducing just the cost. The evidence is clear: childcare delivered by qualified staff working in a degree led setting is the most effective way to improve children’s outcomes.

Quality childcare requires:
• well qualified and experienced staff able to identify and respond to children’s needs
• An active approach to home learning
• A good social mix of children
• Strong links with local family and child support services (which again need to be well funded and high quality)

High quality childcare cannot be delivered without tackling low pay in the sector.

Some key recommendations from the report
Funding a decisive shift towards high quality childcare by:
• Moving to a qualified, graduate-led workforce and equalising wages across the private, voluntary and maintained settings in line with a national pay scale to support the professionalisation of the workforce
• Setting up a properly funded entitlement to full day childcare from age one to pre-school 48 weeks a year.
• Removing the parental contribution to childcare fees altogether for families with an income below the relative poverty threshold.

UNISON has long campaigned for a universal childcare service delivered in the public sector by a well qualified and appropriately paid workforce. This report is a very useful contribution to this campaign. Our Childcare Charter is available here.

Extending the Scottish Living Wage through procurement - vital in social care

A new UNISON Scotland Briefing has been published explaining how public bodies can use procurement to extend the Scottish Living Wage to all those working in public services.

Nearly all public sector workers in Scotland are now paid the Living Wage, (uprated this month to £8.25 per hour) but thousands who deliver public services in the community and private sectors don't yet receive it, particularly in social care.

New Statutory Guidance from the Scottish Government sets out how the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 enables all public bodies to spread the benefits. Previous legal objections no longer apply.

Infrastructure Secretary Keith Brown said that employers "must now recognise that they cannot adopt exploitative practices in relation to their workers and expect... lucrative public contracts."

The Guidance on Addressing Fair Work Practices sets out how public bodies can legally include payment of the Living Wage in contracts, along with other employment matters, such as trade union recognition and representation and no "inappropriate" use of zero hours contracts.

(The Living Wage is a voluntary level for over 18s, higher than the current statutory National Minimum Wage (NMW) of £6.70 per hour for over 21s. It is an independent calculation of what is required to cover the basic cost of living.

While the increased legal minimum announced by Chancellor George Osborne as a new National Living Wage (NLW) of £7.20 per hour for over 25s in his July 2015 Budget is welcome, it is in effect a higher NMW, not a real living wage. It is nothing like enough to compensate for cuts to tax credits. IPPR Scotland said for low and middle income Scottish families the impact is "vastly outweighed" by the cuts.)

It is vital to progress the Living Wage in social care, which is facing a growing staffing crisis. The Scottish Government, COSLA and care providers are currently involved in discussions about how best to drive up pay in the care at home/housing support sector, recognising the links between pay, quality of care, retention and recruitment etc.

An interim funding deal is likely, with work continuing on a more robust proposal for 2016/17, alongside analysis of the full financial impact of the NLW 2016 to 2020 announcement and the overall cost of residential and non-residential social care.

UNISON wants to see the Living Wage included in all social care contracts and will also press our Ethical Care Charter. However, we accept that this has to be fully funded.  We welcome the Scottish Labour party's proposal to pay the Living Wage to all those working in social care.

UNISON branches should study the guidance in detail and ensure that public bodies: revise their procurement strategy to include the Scottish Living Wage; specify compliance with the S52 guidance in procurement documents and the consequences for the LW; revise their tender evaluation procedures to take account of the LW and other employment and 'fair work' standards. These can include no zero or nominal-hours contracts, trade union recognition and the Ethical Care Charter.

Under the Act, public bodies are required to set out their general policy on the Living Wage in their procurement strategy. Bids can be evaluated against that policy and payment of the Living Wage can become an enforceable performance clause. For contracts with a strong workforce element, such as social care, there can be a significant weighting in the evaluation for workforce matters.

With a civil society coalition behind '10 Asks' on the legislation, we had called for the Living Wage to be mandatory for all those working on public contracts. The guidance does not go that far but is an improvement.

UNISON still believes that EU law would allow it to be set as a contract condition. Advocate General Mengozzi's opinion, given on 9 September 2015 in RegioPost GmbH v Stadt Landau (C-115/14), was that EU law did not prevent contracting authorities setting conditions relating to the payment of minimum wages.

Further Statutory Guidance later in 2015 will cover areas including the Sustainable Procurement Duty, fair trade and tax dodging. There is separate guidance on blacklisting.

Potholes indicate a crumbling infrastructure

Potholes have cost Scottish councils £228,000 in compensation claims in just one year. That's the equivalent of over £600 a day.

50,000 drivers across the UK made a claim. This is the equivalent of roughly one claim being submitted every eleven minutes day and night, 365 days a year and an increase on the 2012/13 figure of 46,139 claims. It also costs councils £109 to administer each claim.

Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said the figures were likely to be “the tip of the iceberg” as many drivers are put off by the time and effort involved in making a claim. He said: “The fundamental problem lies with central ­government. They are simply not giving councils enough money to keep their road networks up to scratch.”

The Scottish data for each council can be viewed here.

Potholes are just the latest example of the impact of cuts on council services. As they go into the 2015 budget setting process, most are trying to balance the books through the salami slicing of services. You can get away with poor maintenance for a year or two, but eventually it catches up. By making councils bear the brunt of austerity cuts in Scotland we are presiding over a crumbling infrastructure.

This was also highlighted in Audit Scotland’s overview of local government spending last year.

Metropoles: France's New City Regions

Across Europe the twin challenges of demographics and the recession caused by the financial crisis mean public sector reform is high on the political agenda.
France has moved quickly to make substantial changes to local government. They are reducing the number of regions from 22 to 13 and on January 1st 10 new city Regions were set up. Two more will follow a year later. It is claimed that this is the "first major reorganisation since Napoleon".

While the previous Sarkozy government also looked at reform nothing actually changed the present government has moved quickly to implement change. The French President, Francois Hollande, claims this new system will save €12.2B. Local communes do continue to exist, the new city regions (Metropoles) provide a way for them to work together to provide services for the entire Metropole area. Over the next few years further powers will be devolved to these authorities. These include economic development, housing, water and skills. The three biggest cities will also gain powers over tourism, culture , agriculture and international relations. The two “super metroples” which come into place next year are Grand Paris and Aix-Marseille-Provence. Grand Paris will include at least three of the current suburban department s and possibly more. It is hoped this will increase investment in these suburban areas.

The plans weren't universally welcomed when first announced, for example those in relatively rich Alsace didn't appear keen to merge with Lorraine, where the decline of steel and mining industries has had a severe impact on the economy. The plans for new regions were though passed in December so the merger will go ahead.

Interestingly while many in Scotland highlight the strengths of the localism of countries like France the French are actually are becoming more centralised. Still a long way from our increasingly centralised system though