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In Phase 1 of the migration transfer completed by 31st March 2018, 63% of the sites had now indicated they were happy to work with us towards this date, and all of them selected the in house option with the exception of 6 schools, which in turn elected the open market and TUPE to third party contractors.

The schools who opted for in house were a staff transfer and not TUPE, this would mean a simple payroll code change within Birmingham City Council, and Corporate HR completed this change for us.

The biggest task now for us at Cityserve was to complete meaningful consultations with every employee at their location of work.  We drew up a hard pack for every site, following TUPE guidelines from ACAS for the full TUPE transfers and followed the same format broadly for the internal transfers.

• We ran ELI TUPE data for each school and printed them into the packs, each Client Manager was responsible for verifying this on site at the meetings , we carried out 2 meetings at every site that were recorded and attendance sheets signed by employees.
• The initial meeting was to explain to our staff where the chosen path of the school was and then share the process and timescales with them.
• The second meeting was a formal joint meeting either with the school representative or third party representative;
• Trade Unions were invited to all consultations. 
• There was initial discussion with TUR as it was felt they would not have resource to cover all of the meetings programmed, however we were able to discuss the content with them and they attended where they could.
• We listened to their concerns and managed them accordingly and business sensitively.
• We drew up FAQs and they were updated after any consultation sessions with either staff or clients
• We offered full support and contacts to the schools for the purchase of cleaning materials, we agreed that all sites would still use Birmingham City Council buying power and utilise the agreement with procurement
• We liaised with all sites and Reintec, our equipment provider and were again able to secure bulk buying power for the sites to take over the rental of the equipment should they wish to do so

We met for 2 weekly project board meetings and a weekly business lead project meeting, our business project lead was communicating with each school individually now and guiding them through the process of their chosen path, a transfer compliance audit was created and followed.  The need for both Cityserve and BCC to be fully compliant on every step of the process to transfer the schools was imperative.  We were mitigating risk and ensured we did not create any further or different risk for the council or bring any disrepute to them.

Schools HR had become involved and there was concern they had not recognised that between 400 and 500 staff would need payroll transfers at the end of March 2018, this challenged their workload and could have become a risk to the transfer. 

Although consideration had been given to resources at the onset of the project it became clear that additional resources and unknown tasks meant reallocation of resource was required again.

Progress was made fairly quickly with the schools that went in house, it was more time consuming with reliance on third parties to get the 6 external TUPE transfers completed by 31st March 2018.

Admitted Body Status had to be applied for from the Local Government Pension Scheme, West Midlands Pension Fund, by the contractor and the business lead had to see the application to satisfy the compliance audit and fair deal agreement with Trade Union.

Indemnities had to be approved, although these were fairly straightforward as a blanket approach had been approved at the cabinet report.  It is fair to say activity in March was very high profile throughout the business.

During December 2017 it had been estimated that between 60 - 70% of establishments would opt for phase 1, therefore the target and benefit of savings was achieved and realised.  By 31st March 2018, 63% of establishments had successfully transferred.