Trust Responds to Ballot Result
16/11/2006
Partnership NHS Trust like other NHS organisations is engaged in a modernisation of services involving staff in changes in the way they work, and where they work.
The Trust is making good progress in developing a range of specialist mental health services, which will ensure that, wherever safe and possible, assessment and treatment are delivered in the community. The service changes involve moving acute inpatient services onto single sites, and developing community services into specialist teams. These changes will strengthen the quality of the services and achieve financial savings.
The Trust acknowledges that Unison members have exercised their right to vote to take industrial action but believes the most productive way forward is to continue discussion about how to minimise, or prevent, any potential redundancies. The Trust takes the vote very seriously, but notes that less than 21% of Unison membership voted to take strike action, representing 7.5% of the total staff within the Trust.
The Trust aims to redeploy all staff affected by the service changes. In order to do this, the Trust has held back from filling vacancies since April 2006. Given the size of our organisation and its natural turnover of staff, the number of vacancies that will occur in the Trust will enable it to provide nearly all staff with new jobs.
The Trust will work hard to minimise redundancies and will work closely with the Trade Unions to achieve this.
The Trust is preparing contingency plans to ensure that if industrial action should take place we will continue to provide services with the minimum of disruption, but we hope to avert any industrial action by seeking to resolve the concerns of staff relating to the changes.
Andrew Casey, Interim Chief Executive, said:
“We recognise how difficult a time it is for staff in the organisation that are faced with uncertainty in the light of the service changes, and we will continue to support staff as much as we can.”
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