City Hall chiefs have promised to learn lessons from mistakes they made when closing the South Bristol Rehab Centre. The centre closed last summer and 33 members of staff lost their jobs, as Bristol City Council wanted to save £500,000 a year from its budget.
Human resources bosses said that similar situations in future would be better handled, with affected staff given more information and a chance to air their views. Councillors said the closure of the rehab centre was “not the council’s finest hour” amid a raft of complaints.
Updates on a report into the closure were given to the human resources committee on Thursday, February 16. Trade union representatives urged the council to properly investigate what went wrong, particularly given no affected staff members were asked for their views.
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Jeff Sutton, secretary of Avon and Wessex GMB branch, said: “We don’t feel the report covers all the facts. We were really surprised that, given a lot of the issues that happened, none of our members were asked how they felt and what they thought went wrong. They weren’t invited.
“But there were so many people involved who were affected in so many different ways — people were sick, people were depressed, people wanted to give up — so there clearly needs to be a deeper investigation.”
Councillor Richard Eddy added: “The closure of South Bristol Rehab Centre was certainly not this council’s finest hour. Some of the staff were treated pretty shockingly. I hope we actually learn and do things better in future.
“In my experience, sometimes leaders — be they councillors or officers — tend not to be as open and transparent as they ought. And this leads to a culture not only of distrust, but actually of failure and fear. Changing this culture is challenging but needs to be done.”
After the centre closed, 20 staff members left through voluntary severance, nine were deployed to other council jobs, three were made redundant and one left by “mutual agreement”. Similar rehabilitation services are provided by Sirona at the South Bristol Community Hospital.
Another closure could soon be on the cards, as council chiefs consulted on shutting the East Bristol Intermediate Care Centre to save almost £1 million over the next two years. This hasn’t been signed off yet, and is one of many proposals included in next year’s budget due to be agreed by councillors next week.
James Brereton, head of human resources, said: “I wouldn’t want it to appear that staff were being shut out of the process. I do recognise the concerns raised. I would absolutely accept that there are things that must be learned from this situation.
“It’s a major priority for me and my team to change the council’s cultures. In this particular case things appear to have not got off on the right foot, and it was then very difficult for leaders to recover the situation. Even things like body language in a staff meeting can speak volumes, rather than the words that are coming out of one’s mouth.”
