Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
Dr David Werrett, Mr Trevor Howitt, Mr Mike Loveland,
Mr Rod Anthony, Finance Director and Dr Bob Bramley, examined.
Q100 Mr Gibb: Is there a queuing
time for those procedures too? Is the case time for those procedures
solely the procedure or is there a queuing time for that as well?
Dr Werrett: There will be queuing
times in terms of starting the case, but what we have devised
and are piloting in the London laboratory and moving around the
country is that when cases are received designated case officers
will look at the case and decide exactly what needs to be done
in the case. We did have a queuing time waiting for a reporting
officer to come along and decide what to do. Now we are moving
into a regime where a designated officer will look and get the
case in for examination into the evidence recovery unit as soon
as possible. There may be a queuing time in the evidence recovery
unit before the case gets started. Once the case has started it
will then be smooth through to the report.
Q101 Mr Gibb: Are you talking days
for that queuing time before a case gets started?
Dr Werrett: Yes, it is days.
Q102 Mr Gibb: What are you doing
to tackle that?
Dr Werrett: That is a question
of balancing capacity and demand. We feel this year for the first
year that we have capacity and demand in balance and we shall
start to see those queuing times fall, as I believe they are.
Mr Loveland: At the end of the
day, we should like to get rid of queuing times if we can. What
we are moving to is a situation now where we are empowering our
site managers, if they have work coming through which needs urgent
attention, to bypass the set collection and delivery service because
the matter is urgent. How we do this is through our new operational
management system where we can look at the loadings on each of
our staff, we can look at where all the blockages are in any system
and we invite—in fact we demand—a partnership between
ourselves and our site managers to use their initiative to move
materials quickly.
Q103 Mr Gibb: Is the truth not that
you need more scientists doing the work? Is that not the answer?
You need to match your supply of service with demand for the service
and that is what you are failing to do. Is that not it?
Mr Loveland: For the first time
we have demand and capacity roughly in balance.
Q104 Mr Gibb: So there are no queues
now.
Mr Loveland: Queues are beginning
to fall.
Q105 Mr Gibb: Should they not have
been eliminated? You are dealing with a backlog I take it?
Mr Loveland: Yes. We have done
quite a lot to reduce the number of outstanding jobs.
Q106 Mr Gibb: So pretty soon you
will have no queues.
Mr Loveland: That is my aim.
Q107 Mr Gibb: How soon then?
Mr Loveland: I would say by the
end of the financial year we should be in a much better state
to give a much more responsive service. We are looking to do work
in less than 42 days.
Q108 Mr Gibb: You still have queues
though. When will you get rid of the queues? My point is that
there is no excuse for queues. Why do you have queues? When will
you get rid of the queues?
Dr Werrett: There is some excuse
for queues.
Q109 Mr Gibb: What are those reasons?
Dr Werrett: We are working closely
with the customers to remove those. The way some cases come in
can be in batches and if you inject batches of things into a supply
chain you will cause a bulge to go through the supply chain. We
are working closely with customers on collection and delivery
and how we smooth the queue there. We are examining the supply
chain step by step from beginning to end to eliminate all reasons
for queuing.
Q110 Mr Gibb: You are seeing an increase
in demand year on year, are you not? Is that not what you said
earlier?
Dr Werrett: Yes, we have been
seeing an increase in demand year on year.
Q111 Mr Gibb: Therefore you are training
more people to try to match that demand.
Dr Werrett: Yes, we are. We have
already had on stream this year . . .
Mr Loveland: We have brought another
26 up to expert witness level reporting officers. We have 90 more
in training who will come on through this current financial year.
Q112 Mr Gibb: You are making some
people redundant. Are they administrators, not scientists?
Mr Loveland: Really what we are
doing is taking this as an opportunity to enrich the reporting
officer capacity of the FSS, to try to make sure that we give
customers more responsive service.
Q113 Mr Gibb: So no reporting officer
grade staff are being made redundant.
Mr Loveland: A few have taken
voluntary redundancy and a few seek to take early retirement.
Q114 Mr Gibb: Why do you accept voluntary
redundancy from people who are needed in your organisation?
Mr Loveland: In one or two cases
there are personal reasons for letting these people go.
Q115 Mr Gibb: Then they should just
hand in their notice and you would not have to pay redundancy
money. I do not quite understand that people can leave and get
redundancy money when you are short of this grade of staff.
Mr Loveland: It is a balance.
Q116 Mr Gibb: I am sure there is
an explanation for that. May I ask you about the DNA database?
You said that there are private sector suppliers who have access
to the DNA database. Presumably they will only put information
onto the database which is from suspects and convicted criminals?
Dr Werrett: That is correct. The
custodian deals with issuing the matches which are generated from
the database. The suppliers provide results of analysis and details
of individuals to go onto the database.
Q117 Mr Gibb: What are the safeguards
regarding the usage of that database? Are they subject to all
the usual safeguards?
Dr Werrett: They are not allowed
access to the data or use of the data. The data is solely handled
by the custodian.
Q118 Mr Steinberg: I am a little
confused here. You have a backlog, you have queues, you take a
long time to respond to the information requested yet you are
making people redundant. Is it the tea lady or somebody?
Dr Werrett: The list of people
being made redundant is mainly centred around the administrative
and support individuals who work at the centre of the organisation;
that is the main focus.
Q119 Mr Steinberg: What do they do?
Dr Werrett: Some do personnel,
some do finance, IT and so forth.
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