Finance Committee, 01 Mar 2005
Meeting date: Tuesday, March 1, 2005
Official Report
247KB pdf
Relocation of Public Sector Jobs
Item 3 is to invite members to consider what issues we would like to raise with the Executive in our response to the relocation guide, following on from our evidence-taking sessions on the relocation of public sector jobs. I intend to consider a draft report at our meeting on 15 March and I thought that it would be helpful to take the opportunity to highlight broad issues that we want to include.
I will get the ball rolling by saying that there are three issues that we will certainly want to highlight. The first is to do with consultation. The unions raised the issue of delays in the decision-making process and their impact on staff morale. Also, it is not quite clear what the consultation mechanism was for non-departmental public bodies, as opposed to that for the mainstream civil service, or how the staff, the unions and the Executive were involved.
The second issue is transferability. Staff in NDPBs have a different set of rights from those in the mainstream civil service and the unions raised a number of issues to do with specialist staff, but we suggested in our previous submission that there might be an opportunity to put in place more creative arrangements that would avoid compulsory redundancies and allow experience and expertise to be retained in the public sector.
The third issue, on which the Executive began to shift, was the use of triggers other than lease ends for the consideration of relocation. The minister seemed to adopt a more open stance on that than did John Elvidge in his evidence.
Those are three issues that we might explore if members agree to do that. If there are any other issues that I have not highlighted, we can incorporate them into the report. Are members content with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Okay. We will draft something and bring it to the committee on 15 March for approval.
We now move on to agenda item 4, which is consideration of a draft report on our cross-cutting review on economic development and which will be taken in private.
Meeting continued in private until 12:22.