Courses safe as College outlines plans for managing funding cuts

City College Norwich is pleased to announce that it will not be cutting any courses on financial grounds, and will be protecting its services for students, after unveiling proposals for making savings in its budget totalling £2.8m over the next 3 years.  Anyone thinking of applying for courses starting in September 2010 can rest assured that advertised courses will still be running – however, prospective students should get their applications in quickly as course places are filling up fast!     

City College Norwich Principal, Dick Palmer, said: “The fact that we have been able to safeguard our courses, by making changes to the management structure of the college and finding savings elsewhere, is really good news for all of our current students as well as those who are in the process of applying to come and study with us.  A key principle of the changes we are proposing is that our services for students should not suffer as a result of reductions in our funding for next year.  I am really pleased that we have been able to manage this so that our students will not lose out because of government funding cuts”.      

City College Norwich faces funding cuts of around £980,000 next year after being told that it will receive a lower rate of funding for its 16-19 year old students and reduced allocations for adults than in previous years.  Expected caps on the numbers of higher education students the College can enrol in September could see this figure increase significantly.  Further funding cuts are also likely in Train to Gain, Adult Learner Responsive funding, European Social Fund and other project funding - all important funding streams for the College - following the Emergency Budget set for 22nd June.            

The college also faces major increased costs in its property and facilities expenditure over the coming years due to the Government’s failure to deliver on its promise to develop the college’s Property plan last year.

The College has drawn up a 3-year plan outlining how it intends to safeguard its service delivery in this time of financial uncertainty and a reducing public purse.  With staffing making up 66% of its costs, the College has had no alternative other than to seek to achieve savings through a restructuring of staff posts. The College is proposing significant changes in its management structure, including a 40% reduction in the Senior Management Team (from 7 full-time equivalent posts to 4.4), a reduction from 9 to 6 in the number of Schools, and a change in role and reduction in the numbers of Programme Managers.  

If implemented, following a 90-day consultation period, the proposals could lead to a maximum of up to100 posts being lost across the College, which currently has 1,059 academic, service and management staff.  Staff whose posts are put at risk by the proposals will be able to apply for the changed roles within the new structure as well as unfilled vacancies that have arisen during a recent freeze on recruitment.

Principal, Dick Palmer, paid tribute to the staff at the College in a press statement: “Our staff are the College’s core asset and are critical to ensuring student success.  We have exceptional staff throughout the whole of City College Norwich who are highly dedicated and committed to the success of our students.  I regret all job losses that may result from these proposals, and hope to be able to redeploy as many staff as possible to other roles within the College”.  

“Our priority remains to ensure the success of our students and a key principle running throughout all of the proposals has been to maintain our quality improvement trends. Over the next five years, as set out in our Strategy, we are determined to continue improving and to become a top ten college in the country”.

“In March I stated publicly the College’s commitment to ensuring that our courses would not be cut and I am pleased that we have been able to honour that pledge. The College faces some very testing times in the years ahead, but we owe it to our current and future students to ensure we maintain a financially healthy organisation that will continue providing the workforce of tomorrow with the skills they need”.

“All organisations with considerable public sector funding face similar financial challenges over the coming years and City College Norwich will not shirk its responsibilities to make do with less. We will use the funding constraints as a catalyst for reform and ensure that we provide the best services we can for our community. We will also continue to impress upon the Government and our local elected representatives the vital role that colleges have to play in developing skills to support a strong economic recovery.”

The total cost savings set out in the proposals amount to around £1m in 2010-11 (rising to £2.1m per year thereafter) and a further £700,000 across the two subsequent years, 2011 to 2013.  The College is also doing all it can to reduce its non-staff costs and the projected figures include around £350,000 of savings in non-staff costs for the year 2010-11, for example.