Public sector strikes: the impact on schools and services

LOCAL COUNCILS

Darlington

Darlington Borough Council said its town hall reception would be closed for the day, along with Crown Street library. The authority hopes to run bin collections as normal, although it will depend on the available staff.

Durham

Durham County Council said customer access points, libraries and day centres would be closed.
Locomotion at Shildon, Bishop Auckland Town Hall and Durham county record office will also be shut.
Spennymoor and Newton Aycliffe leisure centres will be closed and Meadowfield Leisure Centre will operate reduced hours.
There will be no refuse, recycling or bulky waste collections. No replacement collections will be arranged.
However, household waste recycling centres will be open during the industrial action.
All council adult learning courses will be cancelled.

Hambleton

Blue box and bag recycling collections in Hambleton will be cancelled for the day.
Residents who have their boxes and bags collected on a Wednesday should leave them out on Saturday.

Hartlepool

Hartlepool Council is warning of severe disruption.
The Civic Centre will be closed to the public, but some staff will be available to deal with urgent queries.
The council’s other main administrative buildings will also be closed to the public.
All council-run museums, art galleries, sports and leisure centres, libraries, including the home library and library bus services, and day centres will be closed.
Hartlepool’s Maritime Experience (HME) will be closed, although there will be public access to HMS Trincomalee and also to the HME’s function rooms for pre-arranged private bookings.
The Town Hall Theatre will also be closed, except for pre-arranged private bookings.
All community centres will be closed, apart from private bookings.
There will be no refuse collection and the Household Waste Recycling Centre in Burn Road will be closed.
There will be no brown bin or white bag collections, but blue box and blue bag collections will be unaffected.

Middlesbrough

Residents due to have their bins collected today are advised to put out their waste and recycling containers as normal.
The council intends to provide the usual refuse collection service where possible. Further advice will be issued if collections are missed.
Kerbside recycling collections will be unaffected.
The Transporter Bridge and Stewart Park will be closed.
Other buildings and services affected include the Newport Neighbourhood Centre, Langdon Square Community Centre, The Manor Youth and Community Centre, Cumberland Resource Centre, the Community Inclusion Team at Sandringham and the North Ormesby Day Centre which are all set to close.
The Neptune Leisure Centre will also be shut, along with The Dorman Museum.

North Yorkshire

North Yorkshire County Council says services may be reduced and the public is being asked to be patient.
Boroughbridge, Great Ayton, Malton, Scarborough and Whitby libraries will close.

Redcar and Cleveland

The council is asking residents to avoid contacting the council if possible, although its main contact centre - on 01642-774774 - will be open with reduced staff.
Anyone whose refuse and recycling is not collected on Wednesday is asked to take it back in and put it out again on Saturday.
Libraries in Dormanstown, Marske, Saltburn, and Redcar's Laburnum Road and Roseberry Road will close.
Leisure centres in Eston and Saltburn will also shut.

Richmondshire

The authority says any disruption will be kept to a minimum and rubbish collections will be unaffected.

Sunderland

The city council is warning of possible widespread disruption.
Most customer service centres will be closed, along with libraries, museums, children's centres, leisure centres and wellness facilities.
There are expected to be no refuse or blue bin collections from households and business premises today.

Stockton

The authority is advising customers due to have their bins collected on Wednesday to put them out next Saturday instead.
The council's main switchboard - 01642-393939 - will not be open, but a recorded message will give emergency number.
Thornaby library and customer services centre will be closed. Stockton library and Customer Services Centre will be open, but operating at a reduced level of service.
Cash payment offices at both, and at Billingham town centre, will be closed.
Yarm library will be open and the mobile library will operate as normal, but most other libraries are likely to be closed.

• Click here to find out which schools and services are affected throughout the region

SCHOOLS

THE strike will cause the closure, or partial closure, of the majority of schools in the region.

In Darlington, just one school, West Park Academy, will remain fully open. In total, 33 will be closed, while others will be shut to some years.

All Hartlepool’s schools and most in Redcar and Cleveland will be shut for the day, while in Middlesbrough, all but one primary school will be closed.

Durham County Council said 231 out of 284 of its schools would be closed, with 22 partially open and 31 fully open.

In Stockton, all secondary schools will be affected today and most primaries will be shut, or partially shut.

Sunderland Council said 76 of the city's 79 primary schools, 13 out of 14 secondary schools, six out of seven special schools and all five academies were intending to close.

The remaining five are planning to open partially, although some schools which are closed for pupils will be open for staff.

In North Yorkshire, the situation is less clear with around half of the county’s schools expected to remain open.

Staff at universities and colleges will also take part in the walk-out. Darlington College will close for the day, while Bishop Auckland College will remain open, but will not run classes.

Stockton Riverside College’s Teesdale campus will also be closed

POLICE

Striking Unison members work throughout the region’s police forces as PCSOs, detention officers, communications staff and administrators.

Officers at Cleveland Police have had their days off cancelled to ensure there are an extra 100 staff available to fill the gaps left by the civilian workers.

Assistant Chief Constable Sean White said: “We have been preparing for the strikes for six weeks and we are not expecting any major problems but I can reassure residents that we will have enough officers to deal with any problems.”

North Yorkshire Police said it had the necessary contingency arrangements in place to ensure core services were maintained.

Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Iain Spittal said: “We are satisfied that these measures will mitigate for any police staff who choose to support the industrial action.”

Durham Constabulary said it was also drawing up contingency plans to provide an effective service.

“People should be assured that essential services will be covered,” a spokeswoman said.

NHS

Patients using the region’s NHS services have been warned to expect delays and postponed appointments.

Hundreds of North-East nurses, healthcare assistants, paramedics, physiotherapists, and support staff such as cleaners and administrators, will join the action.

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, which runs hospitals in Durham City, Darlington and Bishop Auckland, said managers had worked closely with the unions to ensure that emergency services did not face disruption.

A spokesman said: "Some planned services are running at 75 per cent of normal capacity, but anyone who has an outpatient appointment or is coming in for surgery on Wednesday should do so as planned. All acute and emergency services, such as A&E, will be running."

South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, and The James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, said it hoped to run a full range of emergency and essential services. Patients have already been contacted where operations or clinics have been postponed.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust said 39 planned operations would be postponed. They were non-urgent and not related to cancer.

The North-East Ambulance Service said it expected to operate a near-normal 999 service and high-dependency transport service.

However, urgent but non-emergency calls, where a request for transport has been made by a doctor or GP, would face significant delays.

Transport to appointments at clinics and hospitals would be limited only to people needing dialysis, cancer care or other serious illness treatment.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust said it hoped to keep disruption to a minimum, but urged the public to ensure the service was kept free for people with serious and life-threatening conditions only.

Many nurses who belong to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will show their support for striking colleagues from other trade unions by joining protests at lunch time today.

Glen Turp, Northern regional director of the RCN, which has 18,000 members in the North-East and Cumbria, explained that his union had decided not to ballot members for industrial action while talks with the Government on pensions had not concluded but predicted many would join rallies in their own time.

The RCN has been told by a number of NHS trusts that no demonstrations can take place on hospital property so protests are likely to be made a short distance away from NHS premises.

TRANSPORT

A walkout by UK Border Agency (UKBA) is expected to cause delays at the region’s airports, although these are expected to be short.

Durham Tees Valley Airport said it expected passengers flying from Teesside to be unaffected.

However, passengers arriving at the airport would experience minimal disruption, a spokesman said.

Newcastle International Airport said the only potential impact was a delay for inbound international travellers, with passengers due to leave from the airport advised to arrive as normal.

Transport union RMT has confirmed that members of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary would strike alongside public sector colleagues, meaning the total shutdown of the Tyne and Wear Metro and Shields ferry services.

Nexus, which owns and manages the Metro, has confirmed there will be no additional disruption to Metro services on Thursday mornings.

OTHER SERVICES

Hundreds of PCS union members at the Passport Office in Durham City are expected to walk out today.

Workers at The Student Loans Company, in Darlington, will also take action, with callers warned to expect delays.

Thousands of civil servants from the Prospect union, which represents staff at Government departments, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies, will also strike.

Among them will be staff and managers at the Ministry of Defence site at Menwith Hill, in North Yorkshire, research scientists at the Food and Environment Research Agency in York, as well as curators, conservators and conservation and heritage experts at the National Railway Museum, in York. The region’s Highways Agency traffic officers will also be striking.