Jobs at risk at Combat Stress as it bids to become more sustainable

About 13 per cent of the charity’s 300-strong workforce will either lose their jobs or have their roles changed under plans to save £1.6m a year

The veterans mental health charity Combat Stress is to undertake a second round of job losses this year as part of plans to save £1.6m a year.

The charity shed 12 jobs in January when it decided to focus solely on providing mental health services to ex-servicemen and women rather than general welfare support as well.

Now an estimated 13 per cent of the organisation’s 300-strong workforce will either lose their jobs or see their roles changed as part of a five-year strategy announced to staff yesterday. 

Sue Freeth, who became chief executive in January last year, said the existing business model was not sustainable and the new strategy would help the charity to break even.

According to documents filed with the Charity Commission, Combat Stress had a deficit of £3.6m in the financial year ending 31 March 2016, generating £13m and spending £16.6m. Four years earlier the charity had income of £15.8m and expenditure of £12.3m.

“These changes have got to get us back into the black and, more importantly, we have to make sure we have a model of delivery that meets the increase in demand for services,” Freeth told Third Sector.

The charity used £6m of reserves to fund its previous five-year plan. “We can’t do that again,” said Freeth.

Reserves stand at £5.2m, which represents five-and-a-half months’ budgeted unrestricted expenditure. The charity’s reserves policy is to have six months.

Services at the charity’s treatment centres in Ayr, Shropshire and Surrey will be integrated and streamlined as part of the bid to save money. Freeth said that in addition to the charity’s existing six-week programmes it would run some shorter schemes lasting one or two weeks. 

The proposals will be put to the organisation’s employee forum. A final decision is expected in the week commencing 20 November.

Freeth said the charity was “open to listening to alternative suggestions”, but added: “We are confident that what we are proposing makes sense and will get our organisation to where we want.

“These changes are in response to what veterans and commissioners in the NHS want to see and will help us develop a model we can sustain. At the moment our model of delivery is not sustainable. We need to be more flexible and agile.”

Combat Stress, which was founded in 1919 as the Ex-Servicemen’s Welfare Society, is due to unveil a £45,000 brand refresh today as part of its five-year plan.

Freeth described the old brand as “cold” and said the new look, created by the agency Texture, gave the charity a warmer, more authentic feel.

Referrals for the charity’s services have increased by 143 per cent over the past 10 years, partly due to recent military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and also because veterans are more willing to seek help.

– This article was updated on 20 September 2017. It originally said that some six-week programmes might be condensed into one or two weeks. 

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Jobs at risk at RNIB after commercial venture struggles

RNIB Solutions, which was set up by the charity in 2013, made a loss of £4.2m in 2016/17

More than 50 jobs are at risk at the RNIB after a division set up by the charity to eliminate its deficit required a £10m subsidy over three years.

A business case document seen by Third Sector shows that at least 52 jobs could be at risk and a number of other staff could have their hours reduced after the charity was forced to subsidise RNIB Solutions, a directorate set up by the charity in 2013 to generate income and provide services such as talking books and a Braille library.

An RNIB spokesman told Third Sector the document was an internal consultation document that had been given to staff who might be affected and that the charity hoped the difficult decisions could be made in the most sensitive and respectful way possible.

According to the document, Solutions, a division of the charity which has 261 staff members, was set up to eliminate the charity’s deficit, but in 2016/17 it spent £16.6m against an income of £12.4m – leaving a loss of £4.2m.

“This was not an anomaly in a single year; similar levels of deficit were delivered during the previous year (2015/16) and are expected to be delivered during the current year (2017/18),” the document says.

“In total Solutions will have consumed circa £10m of charity subsidy over a three-year period. This has contributed to RNIB as a whole also running significant deficits over the last three years.”

According to information available on the Charity Commission website, RNIB as a whole has run at a deficit for four of its last five financial years. For the year ending 31 March 2016, it had an income of £114.5m but spent £123.1m. 

The average monthly number of employees at the whole charity during the year to March 2017 was 2,321, according to the RNIB spokesman.

The document says the main reason for Solutions’ deficit was the high and rising cost of providing its services.

It also says the charity had initially expected Solutions’ commercial services, such as commercial transcription, consultancy and training to cover the cost of all of its services and deliver a surplus for the charity, but this had not been the case – the commercial activities had generated £1m, but the cost of running it had been £5m.

Many of the services are “highly complex, very manual, built on outdated or unstable infrastructure and are neither efficient nor scalable”, causing problems resulting in frequent customer complaints, according to the document.

“A lot of our resources and energy are being spent each week fire fighting and dealing with the latest issue or problem,” it says.

The document calls for Solutions to reduce its costs and find more efficient ways to provide its services – including through restructuring its teams.

It lists 52 jobs that are at risk of being cut, plus some workers in seven different areas could also have their hours reduced. The document also lists the creation of 36.75 full-time equivalent roles.

An additional 19 full-time equivalent roles as transcription production assistant are listed under new jobs – but this role is also listed in the changed roles, where it shows the number of roles has actually been reduced from 21.72 FTE.

The RNIB spokesman said: “This is an internal consultation document for those affected and as such it would be inappropriate, and disrespectful to those directly concerned, for us to disclose its details to those outside of the organisation. A number of staff have been placed at risk of redundancy with every effort made to ensure job losses are minimal and people are redeployed where appropriate.”

Third Sector reported in February that up to 200 jobs were at risk at RNIB, according to unions. 

The RNIB spokesman told Third Sector today that in that round of job cuts, 30 people had been made redundant and a further 70 had taken voluntary redundancy.

“Sadly, there were job losses,” he said. “We worked closely with the unions to ensure that the jobs losses were minimal and that people were redeployed where appropriate.

“Like any charity we have to make careful decisions to ensure our long-term sustainability. These are challenging times and we have to keep a careful watch of where we are spending our money to make the most of the resources we have.”

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All 1,300 jobs threatened by Lifeline collapse have been saved

The collapsed charity’s administrator, FRP Advisory, says it has completed a transfer of most staff and 40 projects to the charity Change, Grow, Live; the rest of the staff have gone to local authorities

All 1,300 jobs at the collapsed drug and alcohol charity the Lifeline Project have been saved, the charity’s administrators have confirmed.

Lifeline, which officially entered administration on 1 June, collapsed last month despite posting an income of £61.4m in the year to 31 March 2016.

In a statement, FRP Advisory, which was appointed as administrator on Thursday, said it completed a transfer of about 1,000 staff and 40 projects to the social care and health charity Change, Grow, Live as soon as it took over Lifeline.

CGL has also taken on about 40 staff based at Lifeline’s headquarters, the statement said.

The remaining Lifeline projects, including approximately 300 staff, have been transferred to local authorities covering the areas affected.

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The charity Addaction is also running a service involving 32 staff with the NHS and a local charity in Stoke-on-Trent, which is the biggest individual contract transferred back to local authority control.

“The sale of the Lifeline business has ensured that all staff employed by Lifeline, numbering around 1,300, have either transferred to CGL or to the other providers of services offered by the charity,” a statement from FRP Advisory said.

According to FRP Advisory, Lifeline had 70 drug and alcohol projects and supported about 80,000 clients a year.

The administrator’s statement said that “further cuts to public expenditure budgets and some poorly funded projects” had led to turnover at the charity falling.

Lifeline had also made a significant loss from trading activities, FRP Advisory said.

David Thornhill, joint administrator of Lifeline, said: “Lifeline was committed to delivering a safe, high-quality service and continued to operate over the past few weeks leading up to administration while ensuring that it discharged its duties and responsibilities to ensure that security of service provision remained at the core of all decision making.”

Thornhill, who is joined as administrator of Lifeline by FRP Advisory’s Russell Cash and Geoff Carton-Kelly, said that no service users had been affected by the changes, and local authorities and the Charity Commission had all been involved in the transfer of Lifeline’s services to the new providers.

He said: “Sadly this does now mean the demise of Lifeline, a charity that has been operating from Manchester for well over 40 years, and this is clearly a blow to the charitable sector. However, we are delighted to have been able to transfer the majority of Lifeline’s contracts to CGL, which has the resources and expertise to allow it to continue to prosper in this vital sector, providing much-needed support to vulnerable people around the UK.”

David Biddle, chief executive of CGL, said: “We are delighted to have been able to step in to maintain many of the vital services previously provided by Lifeline and to have transferred the majority of staff to us. Those staff provide their invaluable expertise to services users and communities across the UK and it is work that must be continued. We are honoured to be part of that process.”

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