The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is consulting its staff on potential redundancies as the charity aims to save £10m in annual costs.
RNIB chief executive Matt Stringer revealed in an interview last year that the charity was “looking to make a saving of about £10m” and had started a six-month process to review its operations.
This week, Stringer confirmed that a consultation with staff was underway but could not say how many employees would be affected by the cuts.
“We’re consulting with staff, listening to their feedback and exploring suitable alternative employment opportunities to help to reduce the number of colleagues impacted,” he said.
Workers’ union Unite said it has been “fully involved” with the consultation, which is due to run until April.
National officer Mike Eatwell said: “At this stage there has been no agreement on the number of redundancies and the RNIB has initially indicated its preference is to redeploy workers.”
No big service cuts planned
Speaking to BBC Radio 4 in July last year, Stringer said it was “prudent” for RNIB to reorganise now in order to prepare for future challenges and that the changes were not being made “as a crisis” response.
RNIB bolstered reserves after selling its former London headquarters for over £22m, which has left the charity with “a lot of financial headroom”, Stringer said.
The charity has also built up funds after downsizing in recent years by selling services it used to operate including care homes, schools and a college.
RNIB’s previous changes came after Ofsted cancelled the registration of one of its children’s homes and the Charity Commission investigated governance failures at the charity.
Stringer, who joined during the inquiry, told the BBC it was not planning to step back from providing more services for blind people.
“I would absolutely expect that we would still be running the vast majority of those services at the end of this transformation programme,” he said.
“It’s where we get our insight, it’s where we get our connections with partially sighted people, it’s where we get our validity. I think what we’re looking at is how we deliver those services.”
CEO: ‘Can’t prejudge’ consultation outcome
Stringer said this week that the changes being consulted on form part of the charity’s strategy published last year.
“We realised that we needed to review our organisation design and ways of working, focusing on our priorities and being financially sustainable so that we can drive the large-scale social change needed to deliver our strategy,” he said.
On potential staffing changes, he said: “We can’t prejudge what the outcome of the proposed organisation-wide consultation will be, so we can’t say at this point how many colleagues will be affected.
“We’re consulting with staff, listening to their feedback and exploring suitable alternative employment opportunities to help to reduce the number of colleagues impacted.
“We know this may be an anxious time for many of our colleagues and we’ll be making sure we look after our people through the process, supporting everyone and keeping people updated and involved as we move forward.
“We’ll continue to provide support to our customers as we go through the consultation.”
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