Public and Commercial Services Union
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The government risks abandoning the regions, union warns
The 1,700 staff in the nine Government Offices across the UK learned today (7 July) that communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles was seeking ministers’ views on their abolition.
Despite the government claiming it is consulting the public on cuts, the decision has been taken without any consultation with those who will be affected and puts at risk the vital services the offices provide, including child protection and co-ordinating responses to natural disasters.
The Government Offices have built up expertise and strong working relationships with charities and local authorities at a regional level, and removing them will make it more difficult and more expensive to deliver these services.
The news comes as more than 100 senior PCS reps and officials meet to discuss reaction to the most draconian public spending cuts in living memory, and a day after the government announced it intends to change the law to get round a High Court ruling that cuts to existing civil servants’ redundancy terms were unlawful.
Reps will discuss how proposed cuts to the compensation scheme fit in with the wider issues of threats to jobs, pay and pensions, and feedback will be presented to the union’s national executive committee next week to help frame how PCS responds legally, industrially and politically.
This announcement again nails the lie to the government’s claim that it is consulting the public about cuts.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “This announcement again nails the lie to the government’s claim that it is consulting the public about cuts. No one has been asked their view on this, instead it is presented as a fait accompli.
“We stand ready to talk to the government about the alternative to public spending cuts, but if it refuses to listen we will not hold back from launching the widest possible resistance in our workplaces and our communities.”
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