As you know, we’re having to make changes further than those we already had planned as part of our transformation programme, in response to the significant impact COVID-19 has had on our finances, to ensure the organisation can remain sustainable for the long term.
We’re set to be down on income by 30% or £10Million this year, and a further 15% or £5M in 2021. It’s therefore critical to make significant savings (£5M this year, £4M annually from 2021) so we can continue to support our community in the future.
Phase one of the restructure, which focused on our community facing teams, is now in implementation phase. We’re still recruiting into some roles, but a lot of them have been filled, so we can slowly start bringing in the new structure. We’re now preparing for the consultation period of phase two, which focuses on those areas which support community facing teams.
We recognise that the changes resulting through phase one to how we support our local group network will impact our volunteers, as well as being difficult for the staff involved. We are confident, however, that the new ways of working will still allow us to provide effective support and, in some areas, improve the quality and consistency of the support we can offer.
It will take some time for the new Community Networks team and all other teams affected by this restructure to bed in, and we ask for your patience while we put the new working arrangements together. We’re planning to hold a series of online sessions in November to introduce the new teams and talk to you in detail about how our new support arrangements will work in practice and will send details of these in due course.
