Council failed disabled staff says local MP
5:40pm Tuesday 25th November 2008
Comments (1)MP Annette Brooke has blasted Poole council for failing to support a factory which employs disabled workers.
The beleaguered Remploy factory at Alder Hills was saved from a countrywide programme of closures last year, but with the proviso it found new work from public bodies to help cut the subsidy per worker to £9,000.
But staff have had little or no work for the past six months, and the Mid Dorset and North Poole MP, who has been championing the factory, has slammed the council for failing to provide any contracts.
In an adjournment debate in the Commons, she condemned its lack of “co-operation and support”.
She asked: “Is the Poole factory being deliberately closed by slow poison? If Poole Borough Council had given more support, would orders from other local authorities have followed?”
Mrs Brooke highlighted a 2006 EU directive, which, in special circumstance, gives councils freedom to award some contracts free from usual competitive tendering rules.
She told the Daily Echo: “My belief is that they just didn’t want to help. They have a responsibility to Remploy and in my view they have let them down.”
Leader of the council Cllr Brian Leverett said: “We have notified them of a number of opportunities elsewhere, as well as offering their management regular support and advice, which included putting them in touch with potential clients. To say we have done nothing is grossly misleading.”
A spokesman said the council had offered Remploy book-binding work – but the factory didn’t have the equipment to take it on.
He said work suitable for Remploy was limited and already being done by other contractors. To break these contracts would cost the council money.
More than half the employees at Remploy Poole took redundancy this year, but the subsidy per worker is now almost £25,000, and current contracts will dry up at Christmas.
With review of the factory’s progress due in March, the need for work is more desperate than ever.
Mrs Brooke urged local business with “simple assembly work” to think of Remploy.
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bassmankang, poole says...
6:34pm Tue 25 Nov 08
No you've not done "nothing" you've have done "just enough" or the "bare minimum" to fulfil your obligations to Remploy. Notifying disabled workers of "opportunities elsewhere", elsewhere probably being somewhere where these workers cannot get to. "Regular support and advice to management". Is that advising management how to downstaff using the lure of redundancy via the odd email. "Putting them in touch with potential clients" - does this mean someone in the Civic Centre has been leafing through Yellow Pages? God Forbid! I'm afraid that Poole Council will raise rates and taxes but when it comes to SUPPLYING services, finance, jobs or anything else you care to mention then this council is sadly lacking in all departments!