The changing educational landscape together with the impact of local government cuts on local authority provision call for a for a fresh approach to employment law services to schools and academies
PART 1/2
Despite having had the freedom to outsource to the private sector for more than two decades, most maintained schools have been happy to continue with the centralised employment law services provided by their local authority.
While the majority of schools in a borough remained within their local authority’s control this arrangement has made practical and economic sense. For a nominal retainer of a few hundred pounds a year per school, every school, theoretically, enjoyed access to high quality employment and education law. If things went wrong and litigation ensued they would be charged modest (tax payer subsided) fees for the services of the local authority’s solicitors to defend employment tribunal claims on their behalf. More importantly, so long as the school had followed the local authority’s legal advice in the matter, local authorities would pick up 100% of compensation costs arising from dismissals of teaching staff found by the employment tribunal to be unlawful or discriminatory.
However this system has been far from perfect and is becoming increasingly unsustainable.
Most local authorities operate a purely reactive employment law service that relies upon a minority of schools ever requiring their support at any one time, first contact with the schools actually served typically being when a dispute is fast approaching or has already reached crisis point. If disputes progress to become employment tribunal claims these can end up being handled in a bureaucratic and inefficient manner due to the default adversarial approach of some local authorities.This can result in the waste of tens and occasionally hundreds of thousands of taxpayer’ pounds, even where claims are eventually withdrawn or conciliated. These costs remain largely hidden because of the ponderous bureaucratic structure within which maintained schools and local authorities operate and because, with the vast financial reserves available to local authorities, there is little or no impetus for anyone to challenge them.
Recent years have seen many local authority legal services budgets
suffer from a two-pronged attack. Firstly, central local authority funding for legal and other services reduces every time a school opts out to become an academy, or a free school is created, which is happening increasingly. Secondly, as swingeing cuts from central government leave many local authority legal teams depleted of more senior, experienced and expensive practitioners, it can be concluded that their services to schools’ are stretched at best and sub-standard at worst and unsustainable in the long term.
Finally, while there are a few examples of local authorities who have actively embraced the academy and free school revolution and have tried to woo their local local academies with bespoke legal services, many remain politically opposed and hostile to schools who have left or rejected their services. Even if this were not the case it is doubtful whether the local authority reactive, one-size-fits-all model of employment law services is suited to the needs of academies and free schools or indeed those maintained schools desirous of a more tailored and flexible form of legal support.
Time for a new and innovative approach.