Examination of Wintesses (Questions 280-299)
MR ARCHIE
ROBERTSON AND
MR MEL
ZUYDAM
15 FEBRUARY 2006
Q280 Chairman: You are quite convinced
this is having no effect on your work at all, are you?
Mr Robertson: It is not having
an impact on our direct and immediate services to customers. It
is very important to us now, of course, that we have a direct
customer interface with the rollout of the Traffic Officer Service.
Q281 Chairman: It seems to be very
wide, civil engineers, bridge engineers, environmentalists, traffic
management officers. Is it not true that this is going to hit
the Highways Agency's ability to reach its performance indicators?
Mr Robertson: I do not believe
it will.
Q282 Chairman: So you would not accept
that a lot of your work depends on goodwill from your staff because
they have to do an enormous amount of travelling?
Mr Robertson: All of our work
depends on the goodwill of our staff. 500 staff decided to vote
in favour of action short of a strike; many more decided not to
strike.
Q283 Chairman: Why did they do that,
Mr Robertson? It is fairly widely based and it is quite targeted.
You are an Agency that has a direct interface with the public.
Why are your staff so dissatisfied?
Mr Robertson: This is an action
taken by 500 of the 3,200 staff that we now have. We had a protracted
pay negotiation this year in which a number of issues were raised,
including issues around pay bands and ultimately our ability to
make sure that we had arrangements which would attract, retain
and motivate all ranges of our staff. This year we have made some
particular efforts to make sure that we could continue to attract
graduates, both generalist and technical, and we made some adjustments
in agreement with the unions on that. The unions had some other
things that they would have liked us to do as well. I was simply
unable to do it within the remit that was available to me from
Government.
Q284 Chairman: How long do you think
this is going to go on?
Mr Robertson: We have imposed
pay because I do not think it is right to hold back pay from people
over one dispute that affects a few people. We have made the pay
settlement. People have had the money they are entitled to. We
are continuing to meet with the unions monthly at our regular
meetings. As far as I see it at the moment, it will conclude at
the end of March. Unless advised otherwise by the unions, I believe
it will conclude.
Q285 Mr Leech: Is it not the case
that the dispute is to do with payments to the people who are
at the top of the scale? Is it not the case that by those people
being most affected by these changes you are effectively discouraging
your most experienced staff from staying with you?
Mr Robertson: There is a pay scale
issue here both at the bottom of the pay scales and the top of
the pay scales. The issue at the top of the pay scales is where
people who have been with the Agency for a number of years and
who have risen to the top of the pay scales but perhaps have not
got promoted to higher gradings have been given pay increases
within the remit that we can afford but those increases are not
fully consolidated and built upon.
Q286 Mr Leech: Is it not the case
that there is a wide discrepancy between the pay increases that
the people at the top of the scale are being offered in comparison
to people in the lower scales?
Mr Robertson: It depends on performance,
of course. Obviously you cannot draw generalisations on it. It
is the case that we have augmented salaries at the bottom of the
scale in order to attract people into the Agency, which is where
I see the principal issue in terms of having the resource we need
to carry out the job, but that is a relative issue, not an absolute
one. We very much value the contributions of people who have been
working with us however long it is.
Q287 Chairman: I think we will come
back to that, Mr Robertson. You will remember that we did point
out to you in our 2003 report that we were very concerned about
the serious deficiencies with the Agency's accounting systems
and we were told you were producing a strategy which would enhance
project and management accounting. Can you tell us what you have
done?
Mr Robertson: First of all, we
have recruited people to run our finances professionally. Mr Zuydam
is right at the front of that so I am going to ask him to answer.
Q288 Chairman: Mr Zuydam, what have
you done about the Agency's finances?
Mr Zuydam: The approach we have
taken is to look first and foremost at the financial skills in
the Agency and to combine that with some immediate and urgent
provision of management information. In short, what we have done
in the last year and a half is restructure the finance function
of the Highways Agency, bring in better financial skills combined
with the production of monthly accurate and useful financial management
information, which I believe has greatly enhanced the in-year
financial control, budgetary control and accountability.
Q289 Chairman: Did it have any costs
associated with this new system?
Mr Zuydam: At this stage not.
Because it was so urgent, what I decided with my team was, rather
than embark on another potentially costly and lengthy IT project,
we could see what we could do with the tools we had and that is
the approach we have taken, which I believe in the 2004-05 year
bore some pretty good fruits in terms of returning the Agency
to a state of financial control. However, we have not finished
and the next stage is indeed hard coding those improvements into
the Agency by automating the systems and indeed making them a
little bit more robust.
Q290 Chairman: We asked whether systems
were in place that would provide adequate safeguards against any
recurrence of what was a very bad episode. Are those safeguards
in place now?
Mr Zuydam: I believe they are.
Q291 Chairman: How effective have
they been?
Mr Zuydam: I believe they have
been very effective. In the year ended March 2005 I believe that
the Agency not only delivered good value for money to budget but
also demonstrated financial control for the in-year expenditure
down at the projects management level.
Mr Robertson: Could I add something
because I am the Accounting Officer after all and the effectiveness
of accounts is rather important to me. I would like to commend
Mr Zuydam on the excellent job he has done coming in here. Not
only has he brought me good knowledge about my management accounting
now so that I can make good tactical decisions to make sure resources
are well deployed, he is producing for me half-year accounts,
which were not produced by the Agency in prior terms, so that
we can look at the big picture of the Agency.
Q292 Chairman: The people working
on specific projects, do they get access to this information?
Mr Zuydam: They do, Chairman,
on a monthly basis, which is a great improvement from the past.
However, we have got yet further improvements to make.
Q293 Chairman: Tell me a bit about
yourself. What did you do before you came into this job?
Mr Zuydam: I have been a finance
director for some 20 years.
Q294 Chairman: Where?
Mr Zuydam: In the private sector
prior to the Highways Agency.
Q295 Chairman: Could you tell us
a name or is it secret?
Mr Zuydam: Half of that was in
the manufacturing sector with a company called Stylo. If anyone
is a footballer here, you will know "Stylo Matchmakers"
football boots, and the second half was substantially with Balfour
Beatty.
Chairman: So you certainly have relevant
connections.
Q296 Graham Stringer: Can you explain
your staff dispersal policy?
Mr Robertson: If I understand
that—
Q297 Graham Stringer: It is to do
with moving staff out of London.
Mr Robertson: We have moved our
staff out of London under an initiative initiated before I joined.
Our staff are now concentrated very close to where people use
the motorways, in particular with the employment of what will
by the summer be 1,200 traffic officers and 300 people in traffic
control centres. Then we will be operating from approximately
50 sites, many of which are very small offices where people just
come in at the end of their shift and debrief. Otherwise our staff
are deployed to nine locations: 11 offices in regional capitals,
in Leeds, in Manchester, in Birmingham, in Bedford, in Dorking
and in Bristol, those are our principal areas, and then I keep
a small office to support myself and key directors here in London
where there are now fewer than 50 people and falling.
Q298 Graham Stringer: Why have you
not dispersed yourself? Why are you further away from motorways
than all your staff?
Mr Robertson: I am here to give
advice to and sometimes take advice from the Roads Minister and
the Secretary of State for Transport.
Q299 Graham Stringer: And you do
not have enough confidence in the roads to be able to get here
on time?
Mr Robertson: It would take a
while by any form of transport from any major city outside London.
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