Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Citizens Advice (PC 14A)
Thanks for asking if Citizens Advice has any
comments on the additional information about developments in the
local pension service set out in the extracts of Malcolm Wicks'
letter of 20 January that you sent to me.
The reduction in the number of Local Service
Information Points from 2566 in April 2004 to 1598 in December
2004 is striking. From Table B of Annex B to the letter, it appears
that the number of customers seen at drop-in LIPs has fallen sharply
as well, but the number of "effective appointments"
at LIPs has actually risen since April 2004, although it is well
below the peak in August 2004. These figures raise 2 issues:
— What detriments are being suffered
by the 10,000 pensioners a month who are no longer attending LIPs
because those LIPs have been abolished?
— What consultations have there been
with local partners about the changes that have been made?
On the first point, one would expect that a
proportion of these people will have serious problems with their
benefits that they find difficult to resolve by other routes.
It is up to TPS to provide evidence that these clients are not
suffering as a result of the closures.
On the second point, we still consider that
TPS has a long way to go in thinking through what partnership
working really means both at a national and a local level. The
restructuring of the local service is a case in point. At a national
level, there was no consultation about reducing to 133 clusters
and we have had to ask to be informed of which areas the 133 clusters
cover. As for the local level, I was alerted to the impact of
the changes when the manager of Rickmansworth CAB, where I am
an adviser, received a letter from the local Partner Liaison Manager
for South Hertfordshire to say that she was leaving and her job
was being merged with the post in North Hertfordshire, which was
in the process of being filled. I am faxing you an exchange of
correspondence with Graham Carter, Local Service and Partnership
Director at TPS. This shows that TPS is cutting the number of
local Partner Liaison Managers but describing this as "rightsizing".
Partners have not been asked nationally or locally if they find
this acceptable—we have just been presented with TPS's decisions.
Another example of the need to develop real
partnership working is in how TPS sets priorities for the local
pension service. It emerged at the Partnerships Against Poverty,
England and Wales last week that the local service has been told
to give top priority to using information from the IT scans referred
to Malcolm Wicks' letter to promote take up of pension credit.
This is to try to ensure that TPS meets its March 2005 take-up
target. This is highly desirable in itself but is likely to have
opportunity costs of other important work not done. For example,
it may explain why a CAB client couple in the midlands who cannot
use the phone, were refused an early home visit to sort out non-payment
of their pension and pension credit after they moved home and
TPS lost their notification of this. They were told that a visit
for this purpose was not a priority, although it clearly was a
priority for the couple concerned who had no income. Our view
is that it is inappropriate for TPS management to send down orders
to local service managers that they must devote their resources
to a particular activity. In a partnership, what they should do
is tell the local managers that they want to increase PC take-up
using the IT scan information, and ask them to discuss with local
partners how this can best be achieved, using all the resources(TPS's
and partners'), available locally, taking into account the particular
needs and priorities locally. You cannot operate a partnership
by command and control. In short, we fail to see how TPS can develop
local partnerships properly by cutting the number of local Partner
Liaison Managers. And TPS still has along way to go in order to
operate in true partnership with local authorities and local voluntary
and community agencies.
Citizens Advice
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