The following notice was submitted to the CCCG CEO on Weds 18 November 2020 by Adam Lincoln, London Regional Official, UCU

Capital City College Group – Notice of Failure to Agree

UCU hereby give notice of a ‘Failure to Agree’ on the following issue, having been unable to reach agreement with Group management on a set of proposals for safer working conditions as requested in the email to you from local UCU representatives dated 6th November 2020.

The failure of Capital City College Group management to implement the following proposals in full:

· cease all plans to reduce the number of lessons that are taught online.

· move all 16-18-year olds lessons up to at least 50% online.

· initiate discussions with Adult Education Teams to increase online teaching.

· allow all staff in vulnerable categories, and all staff who live with a person in a vulnerable category, to teach online with full pay (including all staff who are 60 years or over).

· reopen the Marlborough and the Regents Park sites for teaching and other purposes to allow additional social distancing measures to be put in place.

If we do not receive an explicit confirmation that the Group management agree and will implement these proposals in full no later than close of business Friday 20th November 2020, UCU will have no choice but to consider ourselves to be in dispute with the college.

The way that this issue can be resolved is via agreement to implement these proposals in full via a collective agreement.

We look forward to discussing the issue further with the Group management.

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The following additional letter was also submitted to the CCCG CEO on Weds 18 November 2020 by Adam Lincoln, London Regional Official, UCU.

Capital City College Group – additional serious concerns

Further to the Failure to Agree letter sent earlier today concerning Covid-19 Health & Safety matters, I am writing now to raise a number of additional serious concerns that UCU are seeking to address and resolve with CCCG management.  I outline these issues below.

Workload

In order to address excessive workloads and halt overbearing micromanagement, UCU calls on the college to:

· End all observations, themed visits and learning walks until the college is running in normal conditions, and to scrap the grading of the ones that have taken place.

· To invest in staff resources, for example to immediately employ departmental administrators whose main purpose will be to follow-up student attendance, in order to relieve current excessive workload pressures.

· UCU calls upon the GLT to implement remission hours for course management.

· To set up a staff/union/management working group to look at monitoring staff workloads and reducing unreasonable expectations thereof.

Management operation

· UCU calls upon the governing board to review the management restructures and their impact on workload and efficiency.

· UCU calls for an inquiry into the systemic problems concerning enrolment, timetabling and IT systems.

· UCU calls upon HR to agree to respond to Union officers’ emails within five working days (in line with college policy) and to review its procedures.

Pay and HPL and LSAs

· That the 19/20 and 20/21 pay claim and the harmonisation of pay across the group (to ensure all staff are on London weighting) is resolved.

· That the CIC HPL contract be harmonised across the group.

· LSAs to be allowed to continue to be eligible for the group 3-year fractionalisation policy as was agreed when original agreement was made.

Harmonisation and restructures.

The current Harmonisation programme is being pursed at an unsustainable and unacceptable pace. UCU calls for a temporary halt to all restructures and the harmonisation programme, UCU will engage with the process of policy harmonisation, starting with agreement on the number to be addressed over a reasonable time frame, once meaningful progress has been made with the issues outlined above.

The above are all issues on which UCU has been seeking progress but on which there has been no significant movement to date.  UCU remains willing to seek negotiated agreement on these matters, and we hope that you will intervene to ensure that CCCG senior managers engage with UCU to achieve progress and agreement.

In the absence of meaningful progress on these issues UCU will be left with little option than to escalate matters through our agreed formal procedures. I look forward to hearing from you soon and hope that we can agree a means of progressing the matters above to agreement. For the avoidance of doubt, UCU requires confirmation no later than close of business Friday 20th November that CCCG management is willing to resolve the above issues with a view to reaching agreement.