Another full on five days doing what our members expect us to do, has seen the Officers, Officials and myself engaging with NOMS senior management on the harmonisation of policies, a meeting of the NEC, a meeting of the National Negotiating Council, supporting the PCS National Gallery Strikers and a review meeting with the publishers of the Probation Journal Sage Publications.
I .will cover these issues in a bit more detail next week as well as the feedback I have received from the Family Court Section on the reply to a Parliamentary Question that Napo helped to get raised about Litigants in Person.
Twitter followers (@ilawrenceL) may have also seen my link to this weeks speech by the Minister for Prisons and Probation Andrew Selous https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/criminal-justice-management-2015 which provides his perspective on the post TR landscape, and I will analyse the feedback that is coming in on what he said. Suffice to say that it is not exactly complimentary and has already been compared in credibility with that other deep space escapade that has hit the big screens this week entitled 'The Martian.'
AGM to be asked to approve subs reduction
Back to the key issue at hand then, on which this weeks NEC rightly focussed a good deal of its attention.
For some time now the Napo Leadership Group has been reviewing and refining our strategy on how we deal with the serious challenge of the removal of check off. Whilst we have secured three months grace to get our processes in order its clear from what is contained in the pernicious Trade Union Bill that this is one of the ways in which Tory high command believe they can prevent Trade Unions from going about their business.
We will shortly be issuing a comprehensive briefing on the Bill, but meanwhile our key objective has been to get the Direct Debit system up and running and fine tune this following important feedback from the NEC and individual members.
Our strategy is to promote the DD campaign by circulars, mail outs and social media but also to take it out to every workplace following the AGM so that we can spell out what Napo is doing and hopes to do for (and more importantly with) all our members in response to the challenges ahead.
Meanwhile, within the next week or so all of our members in Probation Cafcass and PBNI will read about radical proposals to reduce Napo subscriptions by a range of between 4-13% per annum.
We will also be launching an offer for our retired members to benefit from an initiative to join up to the Civil Service Pensioners Alliance.
AG.M Attendance vital
The view of the NEC this week was that members should see this move as a positive component of Napo's forward planning, but that we will need members to turn up at the AGM in Eastbourne and give us the mandate to enact it.
Please Book now if you have not already done so.
More next week, have a good weekend.
.
