Plight of city’s homeless inspires new play
A play about Big Issue sellers by a local playwright premieres in Bath this month.
The powerful new audio drama about homlessness will be ‘broadcast’ to a small but select audience on October 9 before being released across the UK.
Commissioned by The Big Issue with the support of Arts Council England and the Big Lottery, ‘Unknown’ has been produced by Bristol’s award-winning Roughhouse Theatre and written by Bathbased playwright Dougie Blaxland.
The audio play which was originally meant to be a stage play has the support of six people who have recent experience of homelessness on the streets of Trowbridge, Bath and Bristol: Sammy Clark, Nathan Dempster, Ian Duff, Paul Jones, Lloyd Rusdale and Anthony Williams.
At the premiere will be special guest, multi-award-winning film director Ken Loach whose 1966 television play about homelessness Cathy Come Home - was voted by Radio Times readers as the best single television drama of all time.
The play will last for approximately 50 minutes and will be followed
Chief executive of Citizens Advice BANES, Leslie Redwood
the minimum that the law says you’re entitled to, or ‘contractual’ redundancy pay, which is extra money your contract says you can get on top of the statutory amount.
You’re usually only entitled to statutory redundancy pay if you’ve been an employee for at least two years. It’s worth asking your employer or checking your contract to see if you’re entitled to more than the statutory redundancy rules allow.
Statutory redundancy pay is based on age, weekly pay and number of years in the job, up to a max of £538 a week.
The Citizens Advice and Gov.uk websites have calculators to help work out how much you’ll get.
For example if you’re aged 41 and over, you’ll get 1.5 week’s statutory redundancy pay for each full year you’ve worked, up to a maximum of 20 years’ service.
If your employer offers a suitable alternative job, but you refuse to take it without good reasons, they can refuse to by a brief post-show discussion that will include members of Unknown’s creative team and some of the people on whose lives the drama is based.
After the premiere the audio drama will be shared as a link on the Big Issue website and broadcast on radio stations.
pay your redundancy.
You won’t get statutory redundancy pay if you’ve been employed for less than two years, are self-employed or are in certain jobs like the armed forces or police (though you may be entitled to contractual pay).
If you’ve been furloughed, the law now says that your redundancy pay should be worked out using your usual wages, even if you were paid 80% while you were furloughed.
However, statutory redundancy pay still limits a weeks’ pay to £538.
If your employer has told you that your redundancy pay will be based on your furlough rate of pay, you could explain to the employer that isn’t what the Gov.uk website says about redundancy pay, or contact us anytime on our 24-hour Web Form at www. citizensadvicebanes.org.uk.
n Citizens Advice BANES is a charity – please email les.redwood@cab-banes. org to donate, support or volunteer.