Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-83)
MR LEIGH
LEWIS, MR
ADAM SHARPLES
AND MR
PHIL WYNN
OWEN
28 MARCH 2007
Q80 Justine Greening: In your table
two there is a headcount HR transformation programme and a reasonably
consistent figure for headcount saved. All of a sudden in September
2006 it jumps up to 1,000. I know you sent a note to the Committee
on that but can you just run through exactly what that was? What
happened to the headcount the next month?
Mr Lewis: I am not sure that I
can. I have reread the note that we sent to the Committee on precisely
this. No tables like this stand up terribly well when you are
reorganising your Department because you have to then start moving
people from one kind of subhead to another. In September of last
year we established our new shared service organisation. That
took on directly a large number of the members of staff who had
previously worked in both our HR and finance functions. What you
have here is simply a working through of the arithmetic that has
led to that. I am tempted to say that if you could bear 10 minutes
in the company of my finance director general probably he could
help you in a more detailed way than I can.
Q81 Justine Greening: He could provide
a sophisticated spreadsheet that shows movements from one department
to another?
Mr Lewis: Absolutely. There is
a very clear audit trail of all of these figures. We are absolutely
confident that what we have in here going on, with the existence
of internal arithmetic, does not affect the bottom line of the
total savings.
Q82 Justine Greening: In terms of
the staff redeployments, to what extent do you have any actual
evidence that the redeployment split that we can see, for example,
here is accurate? You have talked about audit trails and I know
they are important. What is in place for producing this kind of
detail?
Mr Lewis: We have a very sophisticated
process. We have now revalidated that because this was the one
area where the National Audit Office in their efficiency programme
which gave us a substantial assurance overall for our overall
headcount reduction, recorded only a partial asurance. They raised
some questions about this in particular in relation to some additional
jobs for personal advisers within Jobcentre Plus. We have introduced
a new process. It takes effect fully from 1 April. Again, it has
been pretty thoroughly gone into and we are satisfied that we
now have a fully auditable and valid measurement system. The NAO
will look at that this year in their audit of our accounts.
Q83 Justine Greening: I am aware
that the staff redeployments are redeployments of roles generally.
How many people have been relocated as part of this?
Mr Lewis: Very substantial numbers.
We operate a process within the Department which goes under the
slightly curious name "RECIPE". There is probably an
acronym which one of my colleagues will know for what the individual
letters mean. It is a process which operates at regional level.
It is led by, as it happens, the Jobcentre Plus director for that
region but acting on behalf of the corporate department as a whole.
It seeks to ensure that, wherever it is possible, wherever one
business or one location is reducing staff, before there is any
question of those staff being awarded early retirement, maximum
opportunities are taken to redeploy those staff into other parts
of the Department which have vacancies. We have been very successful
in doing that but in a curious way it goes back to one point of
the Chairman's question. One reason why we do not have happier
staff out there at the moment is because we have asked many, many
of our staff—thousands upon thousands of them in recent
years—to change their location, to change their job, to
change their business. These are not easy things to ask people
to do. We do it because, one, we would not have been able to avoid
all but one compulsory redundancy otherwise and, two, we would
have had far more people probably who we would have needed to
offer early retirement or severance to.
Q84 Justine Greening: This is not
100% on the topic. As areas are under pressure to make these savings,
clearly they manage their budget as a whole. I had an issue locally
where I looked at how much deprived area fund we got in my Jobcentre
Plus district. None of it had been spent at all for the year.
It was quite concerning to me because, first of all, none of my
Putney wards is in it anyway which I obviously had a problem with
as a start. The fact that the ones that were in had had none of
the budget spent—is that something that you are aware of
as happening? Do you think that is good, that the funding that
is there to kick start regeneration and job opportunities is not
being used?
Mr Lewis: Yes, we are aware of
it. No, it is not good.
Mr Sharples: What we are aware
of is that the allocations to the districts that qualify for this
funding were made rather late in the financial year. That is something
that is unfortunate. What we have done though is to say to people
that that money is not limited to this financial year. It can
be carried over into the next year. We hope that that money, having
allocated it, will be spent over the next year or 20 months.
Chairman: This has been an interesting
wind-up session. We look forward to the further written submissions.
Can I thank you for your candour? We should pay tribute to those
who briefed you for today. They did a good job.
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