Unitary
Unitary Council
TUPE Letter for staff
Buckinghamshire Council from 1 April 2020
You will be aware that from 1 April 2020 a new Buckinghamshire council was created. Staff from Buckinghamshire County Council and the four district councils were TUPE’d across to the new council – Buckinghamshire Council - on their existing terms and conditions of service.
The TUPE process included school staff of all BCC controlled schools (i.e. where BCC was designated as the legal employer of the staff in school).
Information was provided to Head Teachers and school staff and school unions in the lead up to the TUPE. Schools are now asked to notify their staff that there was a change of employer from 1st April from Buckinghamshire County Council to Buckinghamshire Council. Set out below is the text of a letter which we ask Head teachers to make staff aware of. There are a number of ways this can be done:-
- Printing off a hard copy of the template letter and sending by post;
- E mailing the letter to the employees personal or work e mail address;
Alternatively, or in addition you could: -
- Print off the template and put a copy on the school notice board;
- Insert a copy of the letter onto your school’s staff intranet (if you have one) or in a staff newsletter.
This information must be notified to staff by the end of April at the latest.
We will be available to provide telephone support with any queries you might have and to help you in any way we can. If you do wish to contact us, please email the HR Service Desk at hrservicedesk@buckinghamshire.gov.uk or telephone 01296 382233.
Archives
School Bulletin - published 30.1.2020
The TUPE staff consultation closed on 17th January 2020.
If your staff have any outstanding queries that you are not able to answer and the information is not in the FAQ’s then please ask them to contact the HR service desk.
The next step is for all employees to receive confirmation that Buckinghamshire Council will be the new employer from 1st April 2020. The TUPE HR group are currently working on how we will contact all staff i.e. whether this is via email or letter sent via the school. We will keep you updated on this.
Please note also that statement of engagements for casual workers and supply teachers will be novated across to Buckinghamshire Council on 1st April. Please ensure you inform all your casual or supply workers.
Further updates will be published as and when further information becomes available. This will include reminders about pensions auto enrolment.
November 2019 update
TUPE Transfer of BCC staff to the new Buckinghamshire Council
We will be starting a TUPE consultation with all council employees who will be transferring to the employment of Buckinghamshire Council on the 1 April 2020, these are staff who are currently employed by Buckinghamshire County Council only. Consultation commences on 2 December and ends on 17 January. Please read the consultation document to find out we are consulting on.
There are also useful FAQs that you may wish to read - these will be updated regularly.
If you have any questions or comments about TUPE please contact us at tupe@buckinghamshire.gov.uk and head your email 'TUPE – Schools' and HR colleagues will respond to your email.
Roadshow presentation
With less than 6 months until we become Buckinghamshire Council, significant milestones are being reached and the hard work to ensure we are ready to become one organisation from 1 April 2020 is taking pace.
This presentation is an adapted version of the presentations used at recent roadshows that Rachael Shimmin, Chief Executive of the new Buckinghamshire Council, has used to update council staff.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact unitarycomms@buckscc.gov.uk.
December 2018 update
As you will be aware, on 1 November, the Secretary of State approved a brand new, single council for Buckinghamshire, to be established by April 2020.
This will be a new council for all local government services and will replace the current five councils – Buckinghamshire County Council and Aylesbury Vale, Chiltern, Wycombe and South Bucks District Councils.
This is an exciting opportunity to improve services for our residents, creating a simpler council for residents, make better use of public money, and be more local to communities.
The new council will be better placed to plan for school places, taking a county wide strategic approach alongside housing growth and the infrastructure needs of schools and the local communities around them as one organisation.
There’s no doubt that there is a long journey ahead of us as we bring together the five councils and develop plans to move towards one council.
However, there will be no immediate changes and we will work to ensure there is minimal disruption to children’s services, including our work with schools and the education community, during this time.
We have been working with the district councils and government ministers to plan how the transition to the new council will take place.
Government will set out how this change will take place in a few weeks in what they call a Structural Changes Order that they will pass through Parliament. This will include:
- the name of the new council - Buckinghamshire Council
- the new council will go live on 1 April 2020
- there will be 147 councillors of the new Buckinghamshire Council. They will be elected to the new council in May 2020
- it will also include information on how the transition will be carried out through a Shadow Authority made up of all the current county and district councillors.
- the order also references the importance of the children’s services improvement journey, that the Shadow Authority must have regard for the Children’s Commissioner report and children’s services must not be adversely affected by the change programme
The new unitary council will be a new legal entity. This means that all council staff, including staff in schools where the county council is the employer, will be TUPE transferred to the new Buckinghamshire Council on existing terms and conditions. This is a purely legal process as we transfer to a new council. We don’t expect there to be any significant impact on school staff and are working to make sure this process is as easy as possible. We will talk to you about this in more detail over the coming months, however if you have any questions in the meantime please get in touch.
You may have seen in the media that Chiltern and Wycombe District Councils have written to government in a ‘preliminary step to legal proceedings' in relation to the unitary process. We are clear that we are continuing to work to an implementation timescale of April 2020 and want to reassure you we remain committed to working with colleagues across all the district councils to create the brand new council for Buckinghamshire. With less than 15 months until the new council goes live, it is vital that we continue to work together in the best interests of our local residents and businesses, to deliver the transition work needed.
Please share this information with your staff.
We will be updating this page with information and FAQs for schools.