I am a representative of Northgate and I am familiar with the Kent BSF programme and the circumstances relating to Mr Deakin's departure from our organisation. Firstly I want to point out that we would not normally want to get involved in such forums as we believe you should be able to converse freely without intrusion. However, in light of a number of the comments made and speculation arising from Mr Deakin's recent posts, I thought it may be useful if I outline the Company's position on these matters.
It is regrettable that Mr Deakin thought it was appropriate to post information relating to his dismissal on such a public forum. In any employment relationship there is typically a duty of confidentiality, hence why we requested such information to be withdrawn. In terms of the reasons for the dismissal, in the same way, it would not be appropriate for the Company to divulge any further detailed information; however I stress that you have not been presented with the full facts. To offer reassurance, this case has no relation at all to the fact that Mr Deakin TUPE transferred to Northgate. There is no ulterior motive on our part to dismiss TUPE employees and, as has been stated, replace them with cheaper resource. We do not take decisions to dismiss employees lightly and we have fair processes and procedures to deal with such matters.
In relation to TUPE protection, there is no legally defined time frame as such, although people commonly think of a year. From our point of view we take our obligations under the TUPE regulations very seriously and always seek to honour transferring T&Cs. A change to T&Cs would be automatically unfair unless justified for valid ETO reasons. We do not have an agenda of wanting to remove TUPE transfer employees to replace with staff on our own T&Cs, nor do we impose Northgate T&Cs on TUPE transfer staff after a period of time by way of a harmonisation programme. We view the skills and experience of the existing staff as an important factor for the BSF project and look at how we can take advantage of this.
One of the features of the Kent BSF programme that we put forward was the move to an interim service ahead of the BSF implementations. The move to BSF involves change in certain areas and the interim service approach allows us to work with employees to understand and manage the change, also looking at how we can develop skills to capitalise on any opportunities that arise. As you may expect, opportunities do arise on such large programmes, and we are keen to progress staff that have the right skills and perform to a high level.
By way of example in relation to TUPE staff, in Kent we offered senior positions in the BSF team, Client Delivery Manager and Operations Team Leader, to two of the most able Network Managers at Financial Close. In the following six months, another Network Manager has taken up the post of Technical Baseline Consultant, we have a Senior Technician on secondment in a Network Manager post and a Technician has taken on Senior Technician responsibilities. We are also exploring development paths for roles either as Junior Solution Architects or Education ICT Consultants. We have also progressed other staff into Implementation Engineer roles and another to a Network Manager post.
Once again, I apologise for having to intrude on your forum, but hope you find the information helpful and it helps remove some of the speculation.
