Seems "serious stooshie" may have been an understatement!
Another electronic epistle has arrived from cyber-space this morning, in a swift clarification following a maelstrom of negative press coverage - both local and national :-(
... as per yesterday, I'll re-produce the message in full below.
What can you say? ... I am still intrigued as to why on earth this type of information was sent out by e-mail in the first place??
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From: Communications
Sent: Fri 11/30/2007 9:35 AM
To: Everyone
Subject: Shared Service Pathfinder project
You may have noticed media coverage concerning the Shared Services Pathfinder project which was the subject of an e-mail Chief Executive’s briefing yesterday, 29 November.
Following the inaccuracy of some of this press coverage we are taking the opportunity to address these matters.
To recap, the Pathfinder project is part of a national project for which we are receiving government funding. The Shared Services team, working with departments, have put together a high level business case with an estimate of potential efficiency savings of over £57m over three years.
It is important to stress that it is now over six months since the baseline data was gathered and many departments have already introduced significant efficiency savings in the intervening period to address their projected budget deficits. The Chief Executive’s briefing states that the business case was for a reduction of 800 employees across all departments. As almost half of these posts related to agency staff on temporary contracts and some of these have already been put into effect. This means that the figures quoted will be significantly lower than those shown in the press.
In particular the Contact Centre jobs figure quoted is inaccurate. These figures relate to initial contact and assessment roles rather than staff in the Contact Centre.
Work will now be undertaken to bring forward detailed proposals and accurate cost and benefits calculations that will enable informed decisions to be taken over the next three to four months.
Although it is not possible to rule out redundancy at this stage, the Chief Executive in his briefing states the aim will be to achieve any staff reductions through natural wastage and redeployment wherever possible.
Managers should ensure this message is cascaded to staff who do not have access to e-mail.
The High Level Business Case will be published on the intranet homepage shortly.
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2 comments:
Reaction from the EEN letters page.
I tend to agree.
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1881592007#new
"Close centre until lift issue is solved"
Am I the only one not go get what on earth this is all about.
It seems that some community centre in Leith is having some sort of issue. Why then is some person from West Granton Road sticking their nose in? Are there not enough problems in West Granton ? Or is it that a council employed community worker who is a member of staff at Duncan Place Resource Centre lives in Granton?
This country is full of foolish social work minded people who really need to realise that the more facilities provided for the feckless and lazy, the more they expect.
Time that they all got off their collective lazy backsides and got jobs which enable them to contribute positively to Scottish society.
The Council should close these so called 'community centres' and sack the useless 'community workers' who populate them. The same workers who have their interminable meetings and who have the temerity to spend endless ammounts of public money persuing greivances against their fellow workers. Charlatans all.
Anonymous
Thanks for the comment - hadn't seen that letter or comment!
Have to say, without being drawn into individual Centre issues, I don't agree with the main thrust of what's said.
Sure, there's always room for improvement, but closing ALL Community Centres is not a solution I'd promote :-(
Andrew
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