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Vice-chancellor’s legacy: a university in cash crisis
• THE article on civil service jobs being redeployed from London to the Midlands comes on top of the 550 threatened jobs at London Metropolitan University (500 jobs go as civil service quits tower, March 20).
The civil servants employed at Archway Tower do essential work at the Office of the Public Guardian. Their casework includes the most vulnerable and mentally and physically disabled people. Their union, PCS, has had to put up a fight nationwide against massive cutbacks in services and 100,000 redundancies that bite into the very fabric of our daily lives. Pensions, job centres and the Health and Safety Executive have been cut back, affecting safety inspections at work.
This news comes in the same week that the vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University, Brian Roper, left after leaving an appalling financial mess, resulting in 500 jobs threatened with redundancies, affecting future courses for students (Boss quits at university hit by cash crisis, March 20). We can only wonder what financial package he will receive while staff and students are on tenterhooks about the future of the university. What a legacy Mr Roper and the management have left in their wake.
I believe there will be joint action regarding the loss of jobs in Islington. At Islington Trades Union Council we will stand together against any cutbacks and redundancies in the public services in Islington.
MICK GILGUNN
Secretary, Islington Trades Union Council
Gary Heather
President
• YOUR article regarding the plans for change at the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) contained a number of inaccuracies. First, no decision has been made that the civil service will quit Archway Tower in a wholesale fashion. The OPG and the Court of Protection (which will be administered by Her Majesty’s Courts Service from next month) expect to remain in Archway for a further period. Indeed, negotiations have commenced regarding an extension to the lease.
However, over time, the OPG will certainly be reducing its presence in London and thus in Archway Tower. That does not translate to 500 jobs being lost.
You refer to my staff visiting thousands of mentally and physically disabled people in the South-east, and these jobs being lost and replaced by call centres. This is simply untrue. Specialist visitors who undertake these important visits to customers across England and Wales are home-based and we have no plans to change this arrangement.
There is reference to a call centre system in new locations in Birmingham and Nottingham – they will be administrative and casework locations in much the same way that Archway Tower is now.
OPG already has a dedicated contact centre (here in London) and current plans for Birmingham and Nottingham do not include changing that. Comments about new sites being “poorly staffed” are very unfair to the new people who have been recruited in Birmingham, and to the existing civil servants that will be redeployed to OPG in Nottingham in due course.
I recognise that there has been uncertainty for quite some time now surrounding the future and prosperity of the Archway area. Public sector tenancy of Archway Tower is just one factor in that and inaccurate reporting gives cause for unnecessary alarm.
MARTIN JOHN
Chief executive and public guardian
Office of the Public Guardian
Archway Tower, N19
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