Redundancies at Wiltshire College

The college is being forced to make cut backs after an audit revealed funding had been claimed for students who were not actually taking classes.

The college teaches 30,000 students across the county and has a number of sites, including a college at Chippenham and an agricultural college at Lackham.

Principal George Bright said the college was doing everything it could to address the situation while protecting staff and students.

"The auditors found various errors and a lack of documentary evidence to support fund claims. Changes have now been made to the management. We are making sure our claim for this year is accurate," he said.

Mr Bright has written to staff on two occasions to explain the situation and is hoping voluntary redundancies will be made. He will be speaking with unions on Monday.

In one letter to staff, Mr Bright said: "Following negotiations with the trade unions they have asked that the college seek any interest in redundancy from all lecturing and business support staff before pursuing specific redundancy proposals."

The problems initially came about when a recent auditors' report for 2001 to 2002 would not allow part of the college's claim amounting to £987,000.

For the last year the college has been using a budget on the basis that it had a £900,000 surplus so at the end of the year in July, it will also have to make cuts to address this, putting the total deficit at more than £1.8million.

The college now has to pay £987,000 back to the Learning and Skills Council within the next few months. "We have money in the bank to pay for it but we are looking at what savings we can make to get a balanced budget for next year," said Mr Bright.

The college also has to budget for the increase in costs of national insurance and teachers' pensions.

The college is planning a number of cuts, including redundancies in academic, business and management staff.

"We employ 1,500 people so it is not reducing significantly," said Mr Bright. "We want to keep redundancies to a minimum."

Other cutbacks will include reducing the number of small classes to manage staff more efficiently and decreasing the number of subsidised classes.

Although the results of the audit have come as a shock to the college, Mr Bright still maintains that it will uphold its excellent standards.

"We had an Ofsted inspection in March and we came out as one of the best higher education colleges in the country. We have done a very good job for students," he said.

Mr Bright added that although the deficit appeared to be a large amount of money, it had to be put into perspective against the college's annual turnover of £26million.

He said changes had already been made to make sure the same errors did not happen again.

"There were mistakes in the management of that area of work, as insufficient checks were being done on the records," he said.

But he said that the main problem lay with the Learning and Skills Council, which has set up an extremely complex funding system.

"They have admitted it is a major problem and are proposing to change it radically," said Mr Bright.

He said many colleges across the country had experienced problems.

"It is an absolutely ludicrous system. It makes management of colleges very, very difficult," he said.