Chamber and committees

Thank you. That is me finished, convener.

I go back to the same question. You said that colleges can make their own decisions. Is there any oversight of that? What if those decisions would clearly be harmful for the college and course delivery and so on? Is it just up to the college, and we then suffer the consequences or get the benefit from that decision?

I know that.

Have you got any update on the impact of staff reductions on course delivery yet?

Do we have figures for the split between teaching and support staff who have been offered and/or taken up voluntary severance?

That would be very helpful—thanks very much.

I wish to confirm this for the sake of clarity. The Scottish Government has said that it will fund the agreement—if one is made—between the trade unions and employers.

You have already discussed job evaluation in some detail, but I have a question on the impact of staff reductions on course delivery. However, before I get to that, will you tell us what thought was given to how redundancies come about? Can anybody apply and get accepted for redundancy or are there criteria? For example, if there are too many jobs of one type in a certain place, are only X number of staff allowed to get it, and so on?

If you believe that it is not, what happens?

Yes.

Okay. That is what I was trying to get at.

So you are saying that the use of best practice is not flexible enough to take into consideration the different requirements of different areas.