Staff set to strike over children's centre closures

Oxfordshire County Council plans to close 44 children's centres, as well as seven early intervention centres to save £8m.

Unite today said that members of the union have voted "overwhelmingly" in favour of strike action and will walk-out on Tuesday 16 February.

News of the planned strike comes just a day after it emerged that Prime Minister David Cameron's mother, Mary Cameron, has signed a petition against the cuts.

Last month David Cameron wrote to the local authority, which covers his parliamentary constituency of Witney, calling on it to look again at planned cuts to children's centres and save money instead by being "more efficient".

The council has blamed reduced funding and rising demand for the need to make "radical changes" to the way services for children and families are delivered.

Chris Gray, regional officer at Unite, said the union's members at the local authority are "highly skilled professionals and deeply committed to the children, young people and the families they work with, day-in and day-out" adding that they do not want to strike.  

“But they have decided that they cannot sit back and watch while the council denies Oxfordshire’s young people a future and destroys its top-class children’s early intervention service," he said.

“In writing [the letter to Oxfordshire County Council], David Cameron has exposed the two-faced nature of his stance, by urging austerity from central government on the one hand, and then taking the council leader to task for implementing his government’s own policies.

“The Prime Minister and his Tory council leader would do well to remember that our members work with some of the county’s most vulnerable families. The one-to-one support they provide on issues from domestic abuse to help with self-harm and drug and alcohol misuse is vital to turning lives around.

“The council risks turning its back on the county’s young people and badly letting down the families that rely on these services."