Funding Cuts – Update

On the 18 March the Principal and Chief Executive wrote to you regarding the budget situation and the impact that this could have on Belfast Met. In case you missed this communication, the Principal’s key messages are summarised here along with some additional information about a Voluntary Exit Scheme, also shared with you on 26 March.

In July 2014, the Good to Great team was established and the team agreed to undertake a root and branch review of the curriculum to ensure that it is fit for purpose. The Creating a Relevant Curriculum Project and Team was established. Over the last 6 months this team has reviewed and prioritised our curriculum to ensure that the courses we run are relevant and that we have clear plans in place to develop a curriculum that will meet future demand.

In October 2014, the College was tasked with developing operating models based on a budget reduction of 6, 8 and 15%. We shared the potential scope of these cuts with Trade Unions and all staff in October.

Scenarios showing the impact on student enrols of 6, 8 and 15% budget cuts were submitted to the Department at the end of October.

During that time work continued in parallel to review the Curriculum and in December, Governors approved the principles and recommendations from the Creating a Relevant Curriculum project.

Collectively, our Minister, College Management, Trade Unions and our business partners lobbied strenuously in recent months to reduce the scale of the cuts.

At the end of January 2015, the Northern Ireland Executive announced that the Department of Employment and Learning’s budget cut would be 6.4%.

Where we are now

On 18 February 2015, we received notification that our provisional budget cut for 2015-16 would be 7.6% or £2.6 million less than in this current year.

While a cut of 7.6% will have a huge impact on Belfast Met; the settlement is better than originally feared.

The reduced budget was set in context with DEL providing guidance on the areas to be considered in line with their policies on a range of government priorities. These areas were shared with you on 18 March.

Having received notification of the scale of the budget cut, we were tasked with modelling the cut in terms of reduced FLUs and reduced enrols: this was approved by Governing Body on 25 February 2015 and communicated to you on 27 February 2015.

In FLU terms, Belfast Met will receive 768 fewer FLUs than in this current year. The Department has determined that we must reduce delivery in HE (by 73 FLUs), Essential Skills (by 29 FLUs) and FE (by 666 FLUs).

Ultimately this means that we will have 9,200 fewer student places to offer in 2015 - 16.

Having determined the curriculum offer and student enrols for 2015-16, the logical next step was to determine a fit for purpose staffing structure: this was drafted and presented to Governing Body on 10 March 2015.

At that meeting the Governing Body approved in principle, an exit process for the College to effectively manage the staffing requirement.

We have been tasked with creating a fit for purpose, right size delivery structure across the entire organisation. Based on budget for 2015-16 and the current underutilisation of staff, it is inevitable that there will be a number of staff ‘at risk’.

At this stage detailed work is ongoing to determine the exact staffing structure for 2015-16 therefore we cannot provide final numbers to you or to the Trade Unions.

Our initial modelling is suggesting a reduction of between 83 and 113 full time equivalent staff which will encompass a mix of academic and support staff and will include a management restructure with a consolidation of the school structure.

Next steps

The College is exploring all opportunities to reduce the scale of the reductions and to identify alternative options for staff. This includes:

• Exploring new areas of work for those staff in areas that are at risk, such as offender learning work and other full cost recovery;


• Working with the Curriculum Managers to explore the potential to increase or transfer those FLU funded areas that have been cut to non-FLU;


• Exploring skills and reasonable reskilling to see if redeployment into other areas of the curriculum is a possibility; and,


• Controlling or reducing of non-pay costs.

You will be aware that a voluntary exit scheme (VES) has been developed by the Colleges and submitted to DEL and DFP for consideration. This is currently being considered and we will not know the outcome until mid-June 2015. However in advance of this the Department has asked each college to identify those eligible staff who may wish to leave on a voluntary exit basis. To this end we issued communications to all staff on 25th March as a prelude to the scheme opening on Thursday 26th. Communications were then issued on Thursday 26th detailing the scheme.

In summary the scheme is based on a calculation of one month’s pay per year of service up to 21 months. There will be a cap of 6 months’ pay for staff over normal scheme pension age and a tapering of benefits for those individuals nearing their normal scheme pension age.

The expression of interest period runs from 12 noon on Thursday 25th March through to 12 noon on Friday 17th April. Late applications will not be considered.

Detailed information regarding the scheme can be found at the following: Voluntary Exit Scheme link

We will continue to communicate with you as and when more information becomes available.

Get in touch

For further information about the budget position please contact Gillian Magee, Head of Corporate Development on ext 5189.