Redundancies - Wales Audit Office in Suicide Alert

With 50 staff set to lose their jobs, together with the possibility of losing their homes and facing bankruptcy, losing your job is bad enough but to find out that the reason for it in down to corruption and the culprits have been paid off is far worse. Then we have to ask if the university is going to call in legal giant Eversheds to resort to its usually bully boy tactics. Unfortunately, it’s usually the innocent and decent staff that suffers in this situation as the corrupt get away with it because they would spill the beans if made redundant, so nothing changes. Under the Health and Safety Act the University must provide a safe working environment so our advice is to make a complaint to the Auditor General for Wales under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, they have already been alerted to the problem.

How Did It Ever Get This Crazy?

The simple answer is that senior staff and office bearers acted against the interests of the University to save their own skin and protect their ‘reputation’. With the demand for better value for money and the public mood on expenses spreading to all forms of public service it’s only a matter of time before the vast sums of our money involved in the concealment of incompetence and corruption comes to light. With the overwhelming public interest in this matter being to ensure proper accountability and regulation an inquiry by the regulator the Charity Commission and publication of the Haines Watts report into the university’s finances will probably mean closure. But we must act to prevent the same thing happening in other universities. Moreover, the mood at the Innovation Universities Science and Skills Select Committee for OFSTED style inspections seems to be gaining favour in Wales with inspections by the Welsh equivalent ESTYN instead of the old boys at the Quality Assurance Agency. There is also a growing demand for tighter regulation and accountability for public money and it looks as if HEFCW is going to be culled along with other Quango’s

Call in the Auditor General
Because of the growing campaign for an inquiry by the Lamp Post, the current situation is unsustainable and in order to prevent meltdown the Auditor General must be called in to undertake a full inquiry. Their only chance to turn the situation around is to restore public confidence with a new management structure who can demonstrate leadership and University Ombudsman to make sure they play it by the rules. What was hailed as a solution for Lampeter’s woes, merger with Trinity University College has failed to materialise and may well drag them down with it.