BASW launches campaign to save car allowances in Wales

BASW Cymru is launching a major campaign to resist local authority assaults on social worker car allowances.

The Association’s Care Miles campaign involves calling on all social workers in Wales to log the number of miles they need to travel to deliver social work services each month and enable BASW to anonymously invoice each council for the money practitioners were able to claim last year but which this year has been denied to them.

BASW Cymru said the removal or revision of car allowances in local authorities, including Newport and Wrexham – with Ceredigion set to follow suit – was a disgraceful attack on a basic necessity for social workers to be able to do their jobs properly.

BASW chief executive Hilton Dawson said the campaign was a response to “an unjustified attack by local authorities on social workers’ basic conditions of service”, as well as to “the abject failure of Unison to adequately protect the social work profession”.

He said the campaign would also target the Wales Assembly Government and the Association of Directors of Social Services to highlight the degradation of social worker’ pay and conditions.

BASW Cymru staff are currently preparing the claim forms, which will be available to members from 1 January 2011. All BASW members, and non-members who request a form, will be invited to track their car usage and submit their mileage at the end of each month. BASW will then submit a single anonymised bill to each relevant authority.

The Association will also publicise the amount of money that social workers have been unable to claim compared with their conditions of service last year.

To find out more or request a claim form, email [email protected]