Examination of witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
TUESDAY 9 NOVEMBER 1999
MR MIKE
SUTTON, MS
ELIZABETH JENKINS,
MR ALEX
THOMPSON and MR
ALAN BROUGHALL
60. What about now? As trade unions are you
happy with the Agency's management now?
(Ms Jenkins) No.
(Mr Sutton) I would certainly say not.
61. I would have been surprised if you had said
yes.
(Mr Sutton) Exactly. Could I add a little to what
may colleague has said on integration. So far integration has
been fairly patchy but it does work where it is easy. The more
difficult areas are where you have highly specialised people who
for years perhaps have worked within, let us say, waste regulation
and the other parts of the organisation where to bring in integration
would actually dilute their expertise and how they apply it. There
is actually a sensible local resistance to having total integration
which I think, when I look at it from a distance, is probably
essential.
62. What would the Agency need to do, in your
opinion, to improve its management of staff?
(Ms Jenkins) Listen.
(Mr Sutton) Fundamental change.
(Mr Broughall) The Agency management at the moment
appear to be all too ready to take decisions in isolation from
informed contributions from professionals and technical specialists
within the organisation and then drive those decisions through
and there needs to be a much greater involvement of the staff
primarily through their representative bodies and working as a
partnership to obtain decisions which are informed and also have
a buy-in from the overall community of the Agency.
63. So would you regard the management's leadership
as going into a culture of bureaucracy?
(Mr Broughall) Certainly the amount of bureaucracy
that has developed since the latter days, in my particular case,
of the NRA into the Agency has increased substantially.
Mr Cummings
64. On the whole question of the changing of
culture, one can understand the frustrations of bringing as many
various statutory bodies together and singing all from one hymn
sheet and that there is going to be a problem, but do the GMB,
UNISON and the IPMS have a co-ordinated approach to this and what
can the unions offer in order to improve this question of culture
in the future?
(Mr Sutton) I think we all participate at national
level through our national negotiating group, but so often we
find that decisions are made before any consultation with ourselves
and we are then expected actually to help the management push
things through.
65. Yes, but do you have anything specific that
you can tell the Committee in relation to your policy for improving
matters within the Agency and in order to get one culture for
dealing with the immense problem they face, the environment?
(Mr Sutton) Well, listening to staff representatives'
input. That would be the first thing.
66. What would your input be though?
(Ms Jenkins) I will pick out one very specific thing.
The way in which the inspectors we represent have been dealt with
has meant that there are layers of general managers between them
and anybody taking decisions. We are talking here about people
who have to have about ten years' industrial experience as well
as professional qualifications before they can start the job.
There is now no professional career structure for them. They more
or less have to go to general management if they want to progress.
This is not the only part of the Agency's work in which this is
true; there are other people who are equally professional in qualifications
and experience. We think that they have completely failed to address
the issues surrounding the employment and career development needs
of these people. As a consequence, they are having quite a lot
of difficulty filling some management jobs in these areas because
nobody is prepared to take on the extra hassle for the rewards
they get which are negligible and they really need to do a lot
more to look at the career structures and training for these sorts
of employees who are essential to their function. The consequence
of what has happened has been that the actual number of people
working on the ground in enforcement has reduced since the Agency
was set up, so although the overall numbers in the Agency have
increased substantially, the actual people out there interfacing
with the industries are fewer than they were when the Agency was
established.
67. For instance, do you have a national conciliation
scheme or a national consultation scheme?
(Ms Jenkins) Yes, we do. We all participate together
in all those sorts of things. The Agency has a national negotiating
structure in which all the unions play a role and we work together
actually very well on that. If we do fall out, it is amongst ourselves
and we have never had problems.
68. And on consultation and conciliation, do
you meet on a regular basis?
(Ms Jenkins) We meet on a regular basis. I think we
all feel that the consultation is sometimes more nominal than
actual and that is one of the difficulties that certainly all
of us, both collectively and separately, have made representations
about on various issues and where we have been completely really
effectively ignored on issues that are important to us.
(Mr Thompson) If you mean by "consultation"
consultation on operational matters, there is no structure for
that.
69. Yes, that is right.
(Mr Thompson) Yes, I thought that is what you meant.
Mr Brake
70. A number of witnesses have suggested that
there is a problem with staffing. Is this your view in terms of
the staffing levels within the Environment Agency?
(Mr Sutton) There seems to be a policy of only taking
on people at below the median level of pay, thereby of course
you are not attracting people who are well experienced and can
actually fit in and get on with the job straightaway. The low
levels of pay offered obviously would be attractive to university
graduates who see this as probably a good starting point and people
who have only got a few years' experience. These of course are
the people who cannot make decisions on the ground and always
perhaps are looking over their shoulder in case they do anything
wrong and of course these are not really the sort of staff that
the Agency actually needs. What it does need is possibly no more
staff than it has got at the moment, but staff of a much higher
calibre and there is great resistance to actually bringing in
experienced staff. The bleating from management is that they do
not exist, but there are very many people who were formerly with
the Agency who have left over the last few years who had got a
great deal of experience and who see really that the Agency does
not actually give them much of a future and they would rather
be outside.
71. So your view is that you have got the right
numbers, but they are not suitably qualified. Is that the view
of the other unions?
(Mr Broughall) Again you will be aware that since
the Agency was formed, the actual number of employees within the
Agency has grown significantly, an increase of about 1,000. However,
the number of employees that are involved in day-to-day field
work, contact with the general public has diminished considerably.
Chairman
72. When you say "considerably", you
have given us the total overall increase in staff, but can you
actually say what is the number of the people on the ground doing
the work?
(Mr Broughall) Unfortunately, Chairman, I cannot give
any figures nationally. A piece of work was done some little while
ago in one particular region where stress of employees was felt
to be a developing problem, particularly those faced with dealing
with the day-to-day work in the field, and at that time it appeared
that the number of people involved had reduced by 25 per cent,
but on top of that within that particular function, a feature
which is termed as "churn", which is people changing
jobs, had risen from more or less nothing to 30 or 40 per cent,
so you have got a huge turnover of people and the type of work
that they were doing which for those few people that seemed to
be left as anchors in the organisation to get on with the day-to-day
contact with the general public and the concerns that they have,
those people were becoming incredibly stressed and the Agency
has now begun to recognise stress as an issue and has begun to
put some procedures for managers in to recognise stress issues
and recognise stress within employees, and I think we would argue
that it was long overdue. Getting back to the point that Mr Brake
mentioned, the problem is not maybe that there are not enough
staff, but it is the distribution of those staff which now seems
to be wrong. My colleague from IPMS has referred to the PIR function
where the number of field officers has reduced from maybe around
200 to 130 and that is being replicated in many of the other field
aspects as well. What we seem to be introducing, the Chairman
mentioned the word "bureaucracy" earlier on, I believe,
and we have introduced tiers upon tiers of bureaucracy in the
management of a dwindling number of operatives in the field.
Mr Brake
73. So you would like to see a shift away from
perhaps administration and management towards the field, but overall
the numbers are low?
(Mr Broughall) I think our members would believe that
in order to deliver the aims and objectives of the Agency, there
is a desperate need to readdress that balance.
74. Are there any regional discrepancies as
well on top of that? In other words, are there areas of the country
where perhaps you are under-resourced in terms of staff numbers
and other parts of the country where there is a surplus? Can you
pick up anything from a regional point or view or perhaps from
a regional point of view in terms of the specialisms of the staff
where you have got more people available to do pollution work
in one part of the country and fewer in another part of the country
to work on waste, for instance?
(Mr Sutton) I am based in the South East and some
of the problems are put down to the fact that you cannot attract
people in the South East of the country. I am not too convinced
that this is particularly a problem in the South East, it probably
does exist over the whole country.
(Mr Broughall) I would agree. I do not think there
is a particular region or part of the organisation that is any
worse off than anywhere else.
75. In terms of attracting these people of a
higher calibre, is it just about money?
(Mr Broughall) I do not believe it is to be truthful.
The Agency inherited some very dedicated staff from its predecessor
bodies and I think the levels of turnover that existed in those
bodies demonstrated the dedication of those staff to the type
of work that they were involved with which predominantly was the
protection and enhancement of the environment. With turnovers
of less than one per cent, that demonstrated an element of stability
which some may be critical of. It demonstrated a commitment to
the work that people were doing. Other than possibly the HMIP
staff, I do not believe that local authority or NRA staff were
particularly well paid. It was the type of work that was being
undertaken that was the important factor. I think the Agency have
lost sight of that and have created a situation now where there
is turnover of eight, nine, ten per cent, which is apparently
quite acceptable, and there is internal churn, which I mentioned
earlier, in some areas of 30 to 40 per cent. The pay element,
whilst it is important, in order to get the correct calibre of
staff you do need to reflect positioning within the market place,
and the Agency has recently chosen to be a median payer and many
would argue that is too low in order to attract, particularly
in the regulatory field, people who are in a position to adequately
regulate others. They need to be high calibre staff.
76. I am a bit confused. So you are saying money
is not necessarily at the root of the problem, so what is it?
Is it that you are now being asked to do these multi-media jobs
and people do not want to do those jobs, they prefer to be specialists?
What is it?
(Mr Thompson) One of the problems that we have, and
I think it is the reason why so much management time has not been
spent on the front line, is that there have been continuous reorganisations
over a period of time and staff have been getting a bit punch
drunk about these continuous reorganisations. The merging of the
cultures has not had enough time to see if there is added value
from them. Clearly where there is specialist staff there is a
real danger that the wage level is a deterrent and you may lose
those specialist staff. I would agree with what Alan has said,
by and large there is huge goodwill and dedication amongst the
staff which I have never seen in any other organisation and I
have covered both the private and the public sector. The people
in the Environment Agency believe in the Environment. Their frustration
is that sometimes there are decisions taken above them that seem
illogical from the ground level.
Mrs Ellman
77. Both the GMB and UNISON criticise performance
related pay and the way that is dealt with. Is that a major factor
in the question of staff?
(Mr Sutton) I think it is probably the one subject
that would unite staff, their abhorrence at the way that the performance
related pay system is actually put into place. It certainly engenders,
as I have mentioned in my paper, a fear culture where people in
carrying out their jobs are always mindful that they have to satisfy
their line manager rather than actually doing the job properly.
When I say "properly" I do not mean it in quite that
way. The point about people making decisions out on site visits,
let us say, is that there will be a reluctance on the part of
some staff to actually make a decision which they might find when
they get back to the office their line manager countermands. This
would be just the excuse their line manager needs to mark them
down a grade when they come to their performance assessment because
there has to be a profile that people within a team fit. So there
have to be gainers and there have to be losers. It makes no difference
whether you have a highly efficient group of people in a team
all performing well, they still have to fit a curve and there
still have to be gainers and losers. There will be this little
thing eating away in people's minds that they cannot be seen to
be making a mistake so they will spend longer doing something
and they will put off making a decision. That is just one example
of where the PRP system really undermines the effectiveness of
the Agency.
78. It has been suggested to us in evidence
that the Agency is not doing a proper job of environmental protection
and it goes for the easy targets, not the more difficult ones.
What is your view of that? Is that related to the culture of performance
related pay?
(Mr Sutton) It is. The management are obsessed by
numbers and visit numbers are a prime measure of the Agency's
effectiveness certainly as far as visiting time is concerned.
It is only natural that inspectors who have a target number of
visits to make, when they feel that they have to make up the numbers
will go for the soft option, it is only human nature.
(Mr Broughall) Perhaps I could reinforce what my colleague
has said. Within the organisation we have what are termed operational
performance measurements, OPMs, and there seems to be an obsession
with these statistical pieces of information which is generally
measuring quantity and not quality of the work that has been undertaken.
Achieving quantity targets is detrimental to high quality work.
Mr Donohoe
79. Surely that is your job as trade unions,
to make sure that system is corrected? If you are going to have
performance related pay you must have negotiated the form that
it would take. I do not believe necessarily that there are not
other factors that come into play as far as the appeals procedure
is concerned. Surely there is an appeal outside your line manager?
(Mr Thompson) To be honest, we do not oppose performance
related pay per se. What we object to is the way that the
performance system has worked in the past. To give credit to the
Agency management, because of equal value considerations we have
actually moved them quite significantly and shortly, we hope,
to having a new pay system which will be part competence based
and part performance.
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