how many employees does SMC have?

How many employees does Struthers Memorial Church have?

As part of the production of these articles we are looking at online and publicly available information about Struthers Memorial Church. This article is seeking to identify from public sources how many employees SMC has. The aim is to provide this publicly available information in a form that can be easily accessed and understood. We think it is right and proper that anyone who is interested can consider and discuss information which has been made publicly available and which provides some insight into what is happening in SMC.
SMC members are no doubt fully aware of:
	the number of employees who they are the employment and recrutiment policies the staff costs being incurred by the charitable company and which employes, including church leaders, are paid and which unpaid
We believe it is important that when they are hearing a person speak or communicate in any way in relation to their support for Struthers Memorial Church people should be able to know if that person is - or is not - on the payroll of the organisation. Similarly if they are not salaried but have an official role that should be made known so their statements can be understood in the proper context.

1 MANAGEMENT
Struthers Memorial Church charitable company was established on 19 December 2007. There are 6 Directors of this company who are:
	Mr Christopher Jewell Miss Jennifer Jack Mrs Grace Gault Miss Pauline Anderson Mrs Diana Rutherford Mr Robert Cleary

The school Board of Governors are directly appointed by the Directors of the Company. They are:
	Mr Christopher Jewell Miss Jennifer Jack Mrs Grace Gault Mrs Elaine McKenzie-Smith Mrs Alison Speirs Mrs Rhian Jewell Mrs Jennifer Offord	Financial advisor Chairperson Minister of Struthers Memorial Church Treasurer Adviser to Board Parents’ representative Health and Safety advisor

2 HOW MANY EMPLOYEES HAS SMC?
The most recent report and accounts for 2009 state that the church had; “an average of 31 salaried employees in 2009”. R&A page 12 section 3. The Report and Accounts do not make it clear whether this is the total number of persons employed or a full-time equivalent figure. No breakdown of this number of employees by cost centre is given. Our estimate is as follows:

Church Employees
3 or 4 church employees - total church salaries given as These are: Christopher Jewell, the two Pudsey church leaders (a married couple) and possibly one other (possibly a full or part time church caretaker in Greenock)			£73,368.00

	a) A DIRECTOR WHO IS ALSO AN EMPLOYEE As well as being a director of the church Christopher Jewell is the “central treasurer and manager of the Greenock bookshop". For this he was paid £30,619 plus pension in 2008, and the same figure again in 2009. b) CHURCH LEADERS WHO RECEIVE A SALARY The Pudsey Church leaders receive a salary. No figure is given in the accounts indicating how much they are paid. It is stated clearly in the R&A page 3 that no other church leaders are paid.
	QUESTION: as salaried employees of the Struthers charitable company do the Pudsey church leaders have an employment contract with terms and conditions and indicating the expected standards of conduct in their role? If they do should those guidelines and standards not also apply to church leaders who are not salaried? Or does being an unpaid leader mean there are no specified job requirements or standards of conduct? QUESTION: If the Pudsey leader (or leaders as they are a couple) have a pension as part of that salary will they still continue to be paid a salary if they continue as leaders of the Pudsey chuch after reaching retirement age and that pension is paying out? Will they then receive a salary plus a pension? This relates to our article “the hogging of the platfom" on the lack of any publicly shared policy on leadership tenure. The only policy that seems to be in place is that - unless a leader is thrown out of their position in disgrace - they appear to be expected to remain in their leadership role until they die.
The 2009 R&A make it clear no church leaders, other than the husband and wife who run Pudsey, are salaried by the SMC company. We think it would be appropriate that if any leaders are salaried by the SMC company for their work in the school this fact should be made public.

School Employees
28 people are listed in the school handbook as working in the school. Total school salaries are given as: £400,269 8 of these are full time and the rest are part time (who works in the school and the proportion of a full time week which they work is listed in detail in the school handbook online and shown below)
	Teaching Staff
	Mrs Alison Speirs Mrs Jennifer Offord Mr Owen Atkinson Miss Kristeen Bell Miss Elaine Black Miss Flo Buchan Mr Andy Creighton Mrs Rosalind Creighton Mrs Rebecca Crosby Mr Andrew Jewell Mrs Joan Jewell Mrs Elspeth Lyons Miss Jenny Oakley Dr Lesley Rankin Miss Emma Rukin Mr Fraser Speirs Miss Lorna Speirs Mrs Mandy Stinglhammer	Head Teacher Depute Head /Science Primary Science Primary Primary Maths English Choir Primary Primary Primary Art & Design/Drama English/French Social Studies/Music Computing Primary English/French	4 days (0.8) 3.5 days (0.7) full time 4 days (0.8) full time 1.5 days (0.3) full time 2 days (0.4) half a day (0.1) full time 2 days (0.4) half a day (0.1) full time full time full time 3 days (0.6) full time 3 days (0.6) TOTAL 12.8 FTE
	Anciliary Staff
	Mr Andrew Collins Miss Nicole Crossan Mrs Jean Kirk Mr Ian Lundie Mrs Elaine McKenzie-Smith Mrs Sheila Mole Mrs Fiona Neilson Mrs Jacqueline Parkinson Mrs Carolyn Speirs Mr Eric Wyllie	Janitorial assistance Nursery nurse Classroom assistant Guitar tuition Treasurer/administrator Secretary Administrator Lunch provision Librarian Classroom assistant/bus driver	Part time 1.5 days (0.3) 1 day (0.2) 1 day (0.2) 1 day (0.2) 4 days (0.8) 1 day (0.2) Part time Part time 1.5 days (0.3) TOTAL 2.2 FTE
	Total is 2.2 FTE plus 3 part-time staff who work for an unspecifed length of time. It is understood that some of those who work in the school are volunteers. In the absence of a published figure, it is difficult to estimate the number of salaried staff in the school. However the actual amounts paid out in salaries are given

	The total paid out in salaries for school employees in 2009 was (four hundred thousand two hundred and sixty nine pounds).		£400,269

	In addition non staff costs were		£122,249

	Giving a total running cost of the Cedars School as (just over half a million pounds)		£522,518

	As a comparison the total school fees income in that year was		£364,375

Shop Employees
	Our estimate for the 2 full time bookshops is 10 or 12 shop employees - some may well be part time. Total shop staff salaries are given as £155,590

3 ESTIMATED TOTALS
One possible breakdown of Struthers Memorial Church salaried staffing might be as follows:
	Total staff 31 (from the 2009 accounts)
	Category	Total	Cost
	All staff	31	£ 629,227
	Church Staff	3 or 4 1 Church Treasurer 2 Leaders (Pudsey) 1 other – caretaker(?)	£ 73, 368
	School Staff	15 Full Time Equivalent or ‘FTE’ (total of above)	£ 400,269
	Bookshop Staff	10-12 FTE? An estimate based on the total of 31 employees 4 church employees less 15 school employees = 12	£ 155,590

4 RECRUITMENT POLICY

	Presumably recruitment to salaried jobs in the church is the responsibility of the Board of Directors. Presumably recruitment to salaried jobs in the shops is the responsibility of the two shop managers. It is not made clear who in the SMC organisation has responsibility for recruitment to salaried jobs in the school. It is not listed in the report & accounts or the articles of association either as a responsibility of the board of governors or as a devolved responsibility to the school head teacher. Many other responsibilities are listed. We would ask the directors to provide a clarification on this to the membership and the public so we can all better understand how the difficult issues that might arise in this area have been handled. We would ask that the recruitment policy document the church has been working to be made public.
NOTES If there are any figures or statements in this article which are not factually correct we will be happy to change them once they have been drawn to our attention. Our opinions and our estimates are our own and we have indicated the basis on which they have been made. We will be happy to revise them in the light of new facts and new information coming into the public domain. We would of course prefer that the Struthers Memorial Church directors published the staffing information and policies for their organisation in full and in detail. We think that their financial supporters and the public to whom they are accountable through the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator should have full access to this information and it should as a matter of course be being made available on an ongoing basis. We believe that the legal and moral responsibility for providing actual figures to the membership and the public for all the items discussed in this article lies fully and only with the Directors of Struthers Memorial Church.