The civil service’s biggest union is set to start balloting members at the Department for Education on their appetite for industrial action over the planned closure of six regional offices.
PCS said hundreds of DfE staff would be affected by the proposals to move officials out of bases at Exeter, Croydon, Peterborough, Watford, Newcastle and Leeds over the coming months.
The union said talks with the department over the plans have been under way since August but have been subject to a “strict embargo” until earlier this month.
It said DfE estimates that 359 staff are directly affected by the plans, but is not considering proposals for increased home working or “sensible hybrid flexibility” measures that could help avoid compulsory redundancies.
The union said many members have reported that they would be facing increased travel time of 90 minutes a day to get to their next-nearest DfE office if the closure plans go ahead. A staff member currently based in Leeds said commuting to Manchester could take more than an hour each way.
PCS said the department has also provided no detailed business rationale for the plans “beyond generic comments about cost” and offered no mitigation plan to protect the department’s work.
It added that many of the buildings that DfE is planning to move out of will remain open for other departments, meaning that savings for the public purse will not necessarily be generated.
The ballot asks PCS members at DfE to support action to stop the office closures, oppose job cuts and end the 60% office attendance rule for civil servants introduced by the Sunak administration and continued by the current government.
PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said DfE should not be able to close offices, enforce a rigid 60% attendance rule, refuse flexible working and “wash its hands” of the consequences.
“Our members are expected to add hours to their days or face losing their jobs, all without PCS seeing a shred of convincing evidence that this makes financial or operational sense,” she said.
“If permanent home working to protect staff can be offered elsewhere, why won't DfE do the same? This is a choice. And right now, DfE is choosing to put loyal civil servants in impossible situations rather than work with us on sensible solutions. Our members deserve better.”
PCS said that schools watchdog Ofsted has recently closed its Cambridge office and offered all impacted staff permanent home-working contracts, while the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has provided guarantees against compulsory redundancies in similar circumstances.
Under the proposed timeline, Exeter would be the first of the six DfE bases to close to staff from the department, shutting its doors in April.
The offices in Croydon, Peterborough and Watford are due to close in June, with Newcastle following in October and Leeds in November.
CSW sought a response from DfE. It had not provided one at the time of publication.