Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
Dr David Werrett, Mr Trevor Howitt, Mr Mike Loveland,
Mr Rod Anthony, Finance Director and Dr Bob Bramley, examined.
Q60 Jon Trickett: I was questioning
the witnesses about the embeddedness of the FSS inside the police
force and the fact that there were no comparator countries which
have gone as far as we have. The witness's answer appeared to
confirm the point. I want to move on now because I am very limited
for time. I notice that paragraph 1.16 talks about an increase
in workload of up to 60% in the next five years. I understand
that at the same time we are now making redundancies or wanting
to slim down the workforce by 260 staff. Could you first of all
confirm that is the case? Are we intending to shed a significant
number of staff, about 10% of the workforce?
Dr Werrett: Yes. We are targeting
the loss of staff to the administrative areas and support areas
rather than the case-work staff, although some case-work staff
will be leaving. It is really in response to the Metropolitan
Police Service's decision to place £7 million of work with
the competition.
Q61 Jon Trickett: Can you indicate
to the Committee what the costs of these job losses will be?
Dr Werrett: We have not finished
the process yet; we have not gone through the process of compulsory
redundancy. At the moment we have gone through the process of
early retirement and voluntary redundancy, but our latest estimate
is of the order of £6 million.
Q62 Jon Trickett: Costs of £6
million.
Dr Werrett: Yes.
Q63 Jon Trickett: Presumably that
is falling to the public purse rather than to the company when
it is set up.
Dr Werrett: It depends. Some of
those early retirement costs would stretch into a period when
the company was set up.
Q64 Jon Trickett: I note what you
say, but it does seem to me that what you are really doing is
preparing yourself for privatisation. I put it to you that the
cost of preparing for privatisation is falling on the public purse
rather than on the private company, which no doubt you will be
a board member of in due course.
Dr Werrett: I would respectfully
have to disagree with that. The restructuring is entirely due
to the fact that the Metropolitan Police have removed £7
million of business and placed it with the competition and we,
as an agency, have to manage our accounts accordingly. We do not
expect to receive money from the Home Office, in fact the Home
Office expects us to make a small contribution each year and that
is what we aim to do.
Q65 Jon Trickett: Do 260 staff then
only represent £7 million a year?
Dr Werrett: We feel that the 260
staff is a response to the £7 million and also in our view
the agency needs to slim down.
Q66 Jon Trickett: So your first answer
was not really a full answer, was it, since when I first put it
to you that you were cutting jobs, you said it was because of
the Metropolitan Police's £7 million? Anybody can work out
that at, say, an average cost of £30,000 a head times 260
staff it is much more than £7 million a year, is it not?
Dr Werrett: I believe that the
actual cost is more than £30,000 a head.
Q67 Jon Trickett: I am sure it is.
I was being conservative. How many staff do you intend to cut
in Wetherby?
Dr Werrett: I do not have precise
numbers for Wetherby, because we have not gone through the compulsory
redundancy process.
Q68 Jon Trickett: May I put it to
you that there is far more concern amongst the staff about this
proposal, first of all than you said in an earlier answer, which
was that there were many concerns about pension arrangements?
There are significant losses of staff here, which I have brought
out and, frankly, I do not think you were totally frank with the
Committee when I put the questions to you. There is alarm actually
amongst the staff, not only because of their own jobs, but because
the quality of service they will provide will be reduced, it seems
to many people, certainly to observers like myself, if you effectively
become a private for profit company, which is what is going to
happen, is it not?
Dr Werrett: May I start at the
beginning of that question? We envisage the majority of loss of
staff to be in the centre of the organisation and that will help
us to reduce costs in response to the loss of revenue. At the
same time I believe that will also increase the case working staff
ratio to support staff. It is important for a service organisation
such as ours to do that in order to provide the best possible
service. The staff at Wetherby will be relatively unaffected by
this compared with the staff at the centre in Trident Court. In
respect of the service provided to the criminal justice system,
if we move to PPP there are various advantages which the organisation
will benefit from and those advantages will move on to provide
a better service to the police forces of England and Wales.
Jon Trickett: That is a statement rather
than a proof, by the way. May I ask for a note to indicate just
where the staff will be lost, sector by sector, as well as the
cost to the public purse of making all these people redundant,
which is clearly going to be more than £6 million?[3]
I think this is a significant thing.
Q69 Chairman: Can you provide such
a note?
Dr Werrett: Yes, we can certainly
provide such a note, but it will be after we have gone through
the compulsory redundancy, if that is satisfactory. My Chief Operating
Officer has reminded me that of the 262, 100 people have left
anyway, have resigned from the organisation.
Q70 Chairman: What sort of timescale
are we looking at before you can provide us with such a note?
We cannot hold up the report indefinitely.
Dr Werrett: We could provide you
with where we have got to so far[4]
with people who have left, voluntary redundancies and early retirements.
The compulsory redundancy situation will be resolved within one
month.
Q71 Chairman: You understand our
concern and you will do your best.
Dr Werrett: Yes, I do and I will.
Q72 Mr Jenkins: On page 25, Figure
14, you explained to the Chairman how you read the figures and
it confused me, to be honest. I should like to give you my understanding.
The days up to 2001, as I read it, you said were days where the
case load was within the department and for 2001 they were days
when the customer triggered the inquiry to when the inquiry was
delivered.
Dr Werrett: I apologise for causing
that confusion. No, the days quoted up to 2000 and 2001 were under
our old work management system and that work management system
took into account averages for jobs delivered, regardless of whether
those jobs were delivered inside the organisation or outside the
organisation. So, for example, when a laboratory sent some samples
for analysis to another laboratory, which is common with DNA,
that receiving laboratory would record a job received and a job
delivered. I felt that did not actually reflect the service to
the customer, because that time was obviously shorter. What the
customer sees is the case, say at the Chepstow laboratory, is
from beginning to end, rather than the intermediate stage with
Birmingham laboratory carrying out a DNA analysis. What we have
done with the new operational management system is record the
average time for jobs delivered throughout the case, as the customer
sees it.
Q73 Mr Jenkins: So we are not comparing
like with like.
Dr Werrett: That is right. There
is an adjustment that we will provide in our annual report when
it is published, which describes the true picture.
Q74 Mr Jenkins: When you saw this
Report and the Report was submitted to us, you signed it off as
being accurate.
Dr Werrett: I did sign it off
as being accurate and indeed it is in the figures that we were
able to provide at the time. We also knew that we were implementing
a new operational management system and we did explain that.
Q75 Mr Jenkins: Is there anything
else in this Report which you would like to elaborate on from
your point of view, which, as far as you see it, might be slightly
misleading to us in its present form?
Dr Werrett: No.
Q76 Mr Jenkins: The rest of the Report
is accurate.
Dr Werrett: Yes, as I understand
it.
Q77 Mr Jenkins: May I ask you a simple
question? What is the sickness rate amongst your staff?
Dr Werrett: I do not know that
figure. I am sorry, we will have to provide you with those figures.[5]
Q78 Mr Jenkins: Which is the best
site, the site which gives you best value for money at present?
Dr Werrett: How would you like
that measured? In terms of contribution?
Q79 Chairman: May I interrupt? I
think Sir John may have a comment.
Sir John Bourn: The Accounting
Officer has made reference to the fact that there have been developments
in the figures in the Report. Mr Jenkins has picked this up, as
other members have. I should just like to make the point that,
as the Accounting Officer said, he did agree this Report. There
is a procedure available to accounting officers to advise the
Committee and ourselves if there are developments in the figures
relevant to the Report. There would have been an opportunity between
publication of our report in March and this meeting for these
figures to have been brought forward so ourselves and the Committee
could have had reference to them.
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