Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
JOBCENTRE PLUS
30 April 2008
Q20 Mr Touhig: But were they unsuitable
because of their location, the layout of the buildings or whatever?
Mrs Strathie: They were not going
to deliver the level of service we wanted. We were unable to deliver
our range of services from those locations.
Q21 Mr Touhig: How much money did
you spend on that part of the project before you pulled the plug?
Mr Groombridge: The makeover cost
of the 49 rolled out offices we have closed and the 10 we have
plans to close is about £20 million.
Q22 Mr Touhig: That is a lot of money.
Mr Groombridge: But there will
be savings when all of them have been disposed of.
Q23 Mr Touhig: You have to sell 12
of them. How much do you expect to get for those you plan to sell?
Mr Groombridge: Once all of those
offices are disposed of the running cost savings will be about
£13½ million a year.
Q24 Mr Touhig: You spent £20
million on the capital cost of doing that?
Mr Groombridge: Yes.
Q25 Mr Touhig: There is one matter
that concerns me about the way the project has rolled out. You
started with 1,500 offices and had a 30% cut to 1,000 and a further
20% cut to 800. Why did you think you needed 1,000 in the first
place?
Mrs Strathie: It was a planning
assumption, and that is about a much as one could say. Bear in
mind that we were going from 1,500 Benefits Agency and social
security offices and so on.
Q26 Mr Touhig: It included Benefits
Agency offices as well?
Mrs Strathie: Yes. That was the
total network. We knew we were not going to replace like for like
and were looking to integrate. Therefore, 1,000 was approximately
where we expected to get to. At that time it did not include our
aspiration for the centralisation of benefits processing, so as
we rolled out we took the decision that we did not actually need
1,000 of those.
Q27 Mr Touhig: Can you deliver the
service effectively with 800?
Mrs Strathie: Yes, absolutely,
and we are. On any measure we are delivering a much improved service.
Q28 Mr Touhig: You have had to sack
15,000 people. Did you close offices in order to meet your targets
to get rid of people?
Mrs Strathie: No.
Q29 Mr Touhig: That was not a factor
at all?
Mrs Strathie: During the 2004
spending review we reduced our whole time equivalent headcount
by 16,500. Office closure was in no way related to that. What
we did was create contact centres.
Q30 Mr Touhig: But did the reduction
in the number of staff help you to achieve your target?
Mrs Strathie: No.
Q31 Mr Touhig: It did not at all?
Mrs Strathie: No. I do not see
that the two are connected. The efficiency derived from delivering
the service in a much better way. The fact that more customers
used our self-service channels allowed us to release those numbers.
I am not sure if that is what you are driving at.
Q32 Mr Touhig: I am just trying to
explore whether you closed offices in order to reduce the number
of staff and meet your target?
Mrs Strathie: Absolutely not.
Q33 Mr Touhig: I have learned from
talking to your staff that you have a good reputation for pushing
decision-making down, but when as a result of local decisions
that pushed up your project by £100 million you had to take
the decision about the layout of offices and so on from the districts
and decide it centrally, what impact did it have on the staff?
Was it difficult?
Mr Davies: As to the impact on
staff, it was generally understood what was going on. There were
occasional questions.
Q34 Mr Touhig: But they had been
used to taking decisions locally and you encouraged that a lot?
Mr Davies: They had, but I think
it was fully understood by them that these decisions were of such
importance that they probably needed a look across the country
to see what was going on in the Jobcentre Plus approach, and I
think it was the right thing to do.
Q35 Mr Touhig: You have now got rid
of the cards that one saw in every Jobcentre. One went along and
looked at a card. The prevailing wisdom was that one put up cards
for jobs about 15 miles away and nothing else. Now you have touch
screens. When I went to my local Jobcentre Plus I found a job
in Dieppe. Have you researched that more people are now prepared
to travel much greater distances because you have touch screens?
Mrs Strathie: From the very first
prototype jobpoints we put into the old Employment Service jobcentres
we quickly discovered that customers serving themselves were much
more likely to broaden their job search both in the type of job
applied for and the distance travelled than just straightforward
intervention. If we look at where we are now, on average our website
gets 1,089,000 hits a week. That is the number of customers who
are able to search for themselves as well as providers in some
cases.
Q36 Mr Touhig: They can search from
home?
Mrs Strathie: Yes; they can search
from any internet access.
Q37 Mr Touhig: Do you encourage people
to go home? I had a case where someone was discouraged from using
the touch screens at the Jobcentre and was told to go home and
use a personal computer. Is that the policy?
Mrs Strathie: It is absolutely
wrong if someone who wants to use a job point in a Jobcentre is
told that he or she cannot and is asked to go home. One of our
strands to bring about a cultural change is to explain to customers
that they do not need to come into the Jobcentre to use the job
point. We have job points in lots of places. You can do it from
any internet cafe or library. There are lots of ways in which
people can access the service. We try to help customers use it
and navigate the system.
Q38 Mr Bacon: I should like to start
with your CVs that may reveal an interesting theme that is pertinent
in analysing the success of this project. Mr Davies, your CV says:
"I have been a civil servant since 1965"—a mere
43 years—"and my career history is in administration
of social security." This is a sentence that may make some
strong men wilt but I have to say you look remarkably well on
it.
Mr Davies: I am paid well—and
you can use that in discussions.
Q39 Mr Bacon: Mr Groombridge, you
have been in the service for 35 years. You started in a local
social security office and you are still in the same department.
Mrs Strathie is a mere slip at 34 years. Mr Davies, when you started
were you in the administrative trainee fast stream?
Mr Davies: I was not.
| 
