Environment Audit - Minutes of EvidenceHC 201

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee

on Wednesday 13 February 2013

Members present:

Joan Walley (Chair)

Peter Aldous

Neil Carmichael

Martin Caton

Zac Goldsmith

Mark Lazarowicz

Caroline Lucas

Caroline Nokes

Dr Matthew Offord

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: David McVean, Deputy Director, Education Choice and Access Division, Department for Education, Flora Goldhill CBE, Director for Children, Families & Maternity and Health Inequalities, and Paul Williams, Work Services Director for Southern England, Department for Work and Pensions, gave evidence.

Q113 Chair: I would like to begin our session by welcoming each of you. We want to have a look at this whole issue of accessibility. It was very important to our Committee that we had representatives from different Government Departments to see how we could get this cross-cutting agenda under scrutiny.

In thanking all of you for coming along, we thought we would give you an opportunity to answer some of the academics who have been saying that only very modest progress has been made on improving transport accessibility to public services since the Making the Connections report.

I would like to know, from each of your different Departments, what kind of priority is given to this at the very top executive level and, basically, how are you making sure that this is an issue that is on everybody’s agenda and what progress has been made. Ms Goldhill, would you like to start?

Flora Goldhill: Clearly, access to services is very important. It is one of the social aspects that helps people live their lives well. In anything that we do around health services what we need to be thinking about is patient and public views about what they think they need from services.

The view we take is that is the very broadest range of activities in respect of what makes for a good patient experience. As we work through the NHS reforms and set up Public Health England, we think there is a fantastic opportunity for local integration, better planning of services, so that when commissioners are commissioning health services they are taking account of other planning issues, and when planners are planning to do things like new bus routes and so on, they are thinking about the service issues.

We see the imminence of health and wellbeing boards as playing a big role in bringing that all together at local level through joint health and wellbeing strategies, which will be built on an assessment of local need. By that I mean local need in the broadest sense, taking account of the social issues that affect people in terms of their health as well as the health issues themselves.

Q114 Chair: In view of that, is there guidance that you give to health and wellbeing boards?

Flora Goldhill: I have brought for you, and I will leave for the Committee, some guidance that we sent out last year, via the Local Government Association in partnership with the Department of Health, that provided advice on how to go about creating a good joint strategic-needs assessment and a health and wellbeing strategy.

Chair: I am talking about accessibility specifically.

Flora Goldhill: It talks about transport as part of that. It talks about going much more widely than these kinds of approaches to planning have gone in the past, particularly in respect of health, and taking account of transport is specifically mentioned in this guidance.

Q115 Chair: How will you measure how they then take that up or how the rest of the NHS takes it up?

Flora Goldhill: The measures of success in the future will be based on the NHS outcome measures and the public-health outcome measures, but local areas can also introduce local outcome measures. Public Health England and the NHS Commissioning Board will be putting out-and I think they have already done this-lots of data helping local authorities analyse the requirements, particularly in relation to health, across the whole of their patches. If they see particular issues, they can create local indicators that will deal with things like accessibility. It may not be in every area there is an accessibility problem, but where there is an accessibility problem they can create a local indicator.

Chair: I am not getting the sense that access by way of transport, easy access to difference health services, is embedded in the way there will be service delivery.

Flora Goldhill: If I can then go on to who is on the health and wellbeing boards, which are critical to creating these joint strategic needs assessments and the health and wellbeing strategies, there will be the Director for Public Health, the CCGs and the local authority planners.

Q116 Chair: I am sorry, you are misunderstanding me. That is not addressing the question that I am asking. How is Government measuring this whole issue of accessibility? How are you using the Department for Transport’s guidance or the statistics that they produce? Are you incorporating them into the framework of policy?

Flora Goldhill: If we have not already done it, I think it is something we should certainly do.

Chair: You haven’t already done it?

Flora Goldhill: I would need to check whether that is part of the data that has been put out. I think it is something that we would certainly want to see put out there, which will inform how people bring together those assessments. The answer to your question is if it is not there, it ought to be.

Q117 Chair: But given that the public health boards, because they were the ones you mentioned, are now, in most cases, out to consultation about what their strategy plan should be, isn’t it a little bit late to think that they should be using the Department for Transport’s statistics and so on in how they frame the new services?

Flora Goldhill: These needs assessments will be continuously refreshed, and they will be kept up to date. As we collect new evidence about what works, Public Health England will put that out to local authorities. There will be a continuing opportunity to bring into these assessments and these plans activities to improve accessibility.

Q118 Chair: Okay; thank you. Just before I move to your colleagues, if I may just ask-you have not mentioned hospitals. One of these statistics that we do have from the Department for Transport is that accessibility to hospitals is significantly worsening, and I think we have seen some of those concerns expressed in debates in the House recently. Do you know why that is, and are you concerned about it?

Flora Goldhill: We have spoken to the Department for Transport about that, and they have done some analysis about that. I think the point that you may well want to make to me is: shouldn’t we be doing the analysis? I think we will take that away and look at it, but obviously this data needs to be understood at local level. It could be that services are reconfigured. It could be that transport services are changed. We need to understand what is causing that change, particularly at local level, so it can be acted on at local level. It may not be a systemic problem, but it may be. If it is a systemic problem, then clearly we in the Department are responsible for helping to get it sorted.

Q119 Chair: I could just turn, first of all, to Mr McVean. In terms of the Education Department, it would be helpful to know how you are measuring accessibility. We will come on to some very detailed questions on this, but, just in terms of the overall Department’s priority, is this something that is on Ministers’ radar? Is this something that is in every policy decision that is being made, how to make sure education services are accessible, and how do you measure it?

David McVean: Good afternoon, Chair. Yes, it certainly is something that is very high on Ministers’ mindsets. Does it feed its way into every single policy decision? Well, not every single one, because not every policy decision has a direct impact on accessibility. I will also say the Department is going through a process at the moment of changing the way that services are accessed in education.

Previously, schools were maintained by the local authority. We are currently going through a process of turning schools into autonomous units so that they can be the access point themselves directly for those services. Rather than having a one-fits-all approach to access, what we are hoping is that by deregulating quite extensively-and we have removed something like 20,000 pages of guidance, not all of it around accessibility-by giving localities, if I put it that way, rather than just schools, the freedom to innovate, we are beginning to see some of that, and that will go on.

Q120 Chair: How does that improve access by way of transport?

David McVean: There is a lot of money spent by local authorities in bussing children from their home to their school and back again-something in the region of £1 billion. If I give one example: our programme to set up free schools, where we now have the first 83 schools. We are moving the schools to where the demand is, rather than moving the child to where the service is.

Chair: Sorry, 83 for the whole of the country?

David McVean: At the moment. There are another 100 or so in train. In that deregulation process what we have removed are the barriers to letting some of those schools expand; so, you increase the scale and the size of the service at the locality, rather than having to create whole new service units in areas where there is not demand. Certainly accessibility is very strong.

Q121 Chair: How do you measure it?

David McVean: We look at things like take-up. For example, in early years the take-up for three and four-year-olds, which is a universal offer not a compulsory offer, is 96%. Therefore, you infer from that that parents have no difficulty in accessing that.

We don’t have a range of specific access measures. What we are looking at is accountabilities. Of course, one of the distinctions between health and education is that we are dealing largely with children who must attend-so that compulsory-age element means it is not an optional service. It is a service they must flow through. We are looking at how easy that is.

You asked about guidance. In our guidance, we have a presumption, for example, against the closure of a rural school, which is something that many local authorities find quite difficult because, of course, if you close a rural school, you do reduce access. So, much more of our decision-

Q122 Chair: How is that different from closing an urban school where people might have less access just because they cannot afford the bus fare or there isn’t a public-transport route? How you measure that? That is what I want to know. How do you measure access?

David McVean: I think I will have to take that one away. I don’t think we have what you would regard as a suite of measures on access.

Chair: So, you do not have specific measures like-

David McVean: We look at a range of issues.

Q123 Caroline Nokes: I think you might have just managed to identify the answer, but you specifically referred to free schools. When you agree to a free school being set up, you said that you measured whether it was accessible by whether there was demand for it. Is there any measure by which you look at the location and demand for a free school and work out whether this was the most convenient site for wherever the organisation setting it up wanted to put it, or do you look at how accessible that is likely to be for the pupils that might go there?

David McVean: It is both. We look at the levels of demand that the proposers for the free school are coming forward with and saying, "We believe there is enough demand for X number of pupils in this area". Before the Secretary of State approves that application, we go through a transport assessment. The transport assessment looks at a range of aspects. These are generally drawn up by specialist consultants for the Department, and they look at levels of demand and accessibility by public transport. They look at projected levels of transport in the area before the school and after the school. They also look and advise the Department and the proposers for the free school on what sort of mitigation measures might be necessary to ensure that it is accessible and it is a reasonable cost.

Q124 Chair: I think it would be helpful to have a perspective from DWP in terms of how you measure accessibility in terms of your customers. "Customers" is not the right word-claimants.

Paul Williams: Certainly, Chair, and thank you very much for inviting me. Accessibility to our services is through a wider range of media than simply traditional Jobcentres. We use the internet. We use telephones. We have a DWP visiting service that will call where a customer can’t engage with us any other way. How do we measure-

Chair: Sorry, can I just interrupt? On that, do you always use the cheaper telephone rates? Is there an issue about people being able to afford to make the phonecalls through to DWP?

Paul Williams: We have preferred channels. We will encourage claimants to use the channel that is most convenient for them at the time they are making it. I will give you an example: if a claimant wants to make a new claim to JSA, they will dial our 0800 number, which is free, and they will have that conversation with the telephone operator and we will take their claim.

Q125 Chair: There is not an issue about the cost of phone calls for claimants?

Paul Williams: No, but our preference is for that claimant to make their claim online via our online service and use the internet at a time that is convenient to them. You asked about measurement. We will measure the operational performance, and we get customer feedback on our service lines; so, we get customer feedback on our Benefit Advisory Service and our JSA online service. We will measure how quickly our phone calls are answered.

We also hold a customer survey each year where we test how well we are doing against the commitment in the DWP customer charter, and one of those commitments is about easy access. In 2011 the JCP customer survey found that 81% of Jobcentre Plus customers had no problem accessing the service.

Q126 Chair: I do not know if you have already provided it to us, but it might be helpful to see that response you have had. In terms of how you measure as well, one of the issues that we are looking at in this inquiry is about social inequality; that is, in a rural or an urban area. I think one of the issues that I would be interested to know more about is this assumption that everyone is going to be making online claims.

Paul Williams: For Universal Credit.

Chair: Therefore, how much does your policy give flexibility to those funding the service to help people, who might not necessarily at this stage be online, to not only get online but to have the skills to get online?

Paul Williams: We will make provision for people who find it difficult to get online. Currently, in January, 51% of our new JSA claims were made online. That is approximately 150,000 people. A year ago that equivalent figure was 25-26%. Our ambition, prior to Universal Credit, is to move online take-up to 80%. That is the ambition.

Q127 Chair: What about the remaining 20% of those who are not online? Is there going to be extra help and support in the locality for those people?

Paul Williams: DWP people will support customers either by sign-posting to local providers who can help with availability of internet or IT skills, UK Online and libraries, but also in Jobcentres we have internet access devices. So, we will be able to help customers-for example, those who want to set up their Universal Jobmatch account or those who struggle to make a new claim online. There has been a recent announcement about Universal Credit in terms of the Department working closely with local authorities and contracting for some support services to provide that extra help for customers who need it to go online.

Q128 Caroline Nokes: Just following up on that, how easy it is for the online application process to be completed by claimants who have particularly poor download speeds and broadband connectivity?

Paul Williams: It is a factor, and it is easier where we have superfast broadband, but 51% of all our new claims in January were made online. Customers have the advantage of being able to do that in the convenience of their own homes at a time that would suit them. Take-up is increasing quickly.

Q129 Caroline Nokes: While I appreciate your point about take-up increasing, do you not think that it discriminates quite clearly against those who might live in rural areas where there are very poor download speeds and the added problem of very poor public transport? They could not get into the Jobcentre to complete it online in the Jobcentre; so, it is almost a double whammy of inaccessibility.

Paul Williams: I partially agree. I cover the south of England so Devon, Cornwall and Wiltshire are familiar to me. I mean, we have superfast broadband in Cornwall.

Caroline Nokes: Not in Wiltshire.

Paul Williams: I would say that if I am living in a rural location, Universal Jobmatch or the ability to job search online is a real boon. I am sorry; I forgot the first part of your question.

Caroline Nokes: I just said in the rural areas you are least likely to have remotely fast broadband and, of course, you have the double whammy of having poor access to public transport, so you cannot get into the Jobcentre either.

Paul Williams: We can help with getting to the Jobcentre, and perhaps I will have an opportunity to explain some of the things that we can do in that regard.

Chair: We will look at that in a bit more detail.

Paul Williams: All I would say is online access is clearly better for the citizen where they are able to do it-and better for the taxpayer. I think it is also better for individuals and for our communities. As part of Universal Credit, the organisations that contract to provide those support services for IT will also help claimants use Skype properly to keep in touch with their grandchildren and to do their shopping online. I think there is a social good that is an important by-product of what we are doing.

Q130 Chair: Does the DWP make use of the statistics produced by the Department for Transport?

Paul Williams: I am not aware that we do, but it is interesting that the 83%, which I think is the accessibility of employment centres, is similar to the 81% that our customer satisfaction surveys are telling us.

Q131 Dr Offord: Good afternoon. Who in your respective Departments is accountable for access to transport?

David McVean: In my division, we have policy and responsibility for home to school transport policy, but it is very much about setting a policy framework that local authorities and schools operate within. As I said earlier, that has been deregulated. Obviously, I have a director and a director-general and we continue to look at statistics on how-the Chair mentioned social inequality earlier.

We are very interested in figures on how low-income families particularly fare in terms of attainment and of how they are supported by local authorities in terms of home to school funding. As I said earlier, we are moving away from a top down metric monitoring Department to very much a deregulation Department and letting localities come up with the solutions that best fit their needs. Our Secretary of State often describes it is having greater autonomy locally but much sharper accountability.

Q132 Dr Offord: Who is it accountable to?

David McVean: Well, ultimately we have a board and a set of Ministers and they are the ones who dictate the strategic direction for the Department. Clearly at the moment we are very much looking at all aspects of access, whether that be for gifted and talented children or, as I said, low-income families. We want every child to thrive, so our approach is we either increase the quality of the local schools, we bring in new providers, or we create the innovations that allow some of what was getting in the way of access.

For example, when local authorities are doing their procurement-and we might come on to this later in the efficiency and practice review that we have been holding-one of the things we found there was that their procurement, driven by value for money and driven by the need to find savings, has led to a contract that is so tight that the bus must turn up at 3.05 pm. If that bus does not leave at 3.06 pm, then the bus company-you get into that level of micro-management. What that means is that our children, particularly in rural areas, who might benefit from extracurricular activity, hence the accessibility for us, are losing out on that because they have to get the bus home. There is no other way of getting home.

Q133 Dr Offord: Are you saying the education access and choice division are responsible for transport accessibility?

David McVean: That is part of my policy responsibility, yes.

Dr Offord: All right; okay. Thank you.

Flora Goldhill: Could I link the question to reducing health inequalities and the social determinants of health to the Michael Marmot review, which made it clear how all of these things interacted? What we have in the Health and Social Care Act is the duty on all of us in the Department of Health, and a duty on the NHS Commissioning Board and Clinical Commissioning Groups, to have regard to reducing inequities.

I think that is about analysing different approaches, different policies down to different activities at local level, and thinking about the impact that they have on groups of people. We all have a duty to have regard to reducing health inequalities, and then interpreting that into what that means locally by particular commissioning groups and so on is done, obviously, at a local level. One of the duties on Clinical Commissioning Groups is to ensure that the provision of health services is integrated with the provision of health-related services. Health-related services would include services that get people to healthcare facilities. We all have that duty in the Department of Health.

Q134 Dr Offord: How do you exercise that accountability?

Flora Goldhill: The Act is something that we are all turning our minds to at the moment. The Secretary of State will have to prepare a report on how the Department has regard to the duty. The NHS Commissioning Board also has a responsibility to produce a report about how it is taking action to reduce health inequalities. The Department will then take a view on what the Commissioning Board is doing. The methodologies behind that are all being developed at the moment.

Q135 Dr Offord: Can I bring you back though to transport accessibility, rather than health inequalities? You are saying the Secretary of State is responsible for that?

Flora Goldhill: In as much as it is linked to reducing health inequality. We all have the responsibility for working out what things we should be taking action on that would reduce health inequality, and accessibility where it is appropriate would be one of them.

Dr Offord: I am still not entirely sure, because I would not have imagined that would be a role for the Secretary of State.

Flora Goldhill: That specific role on accessibility is not what I am talking about. I am talking about, as you analyse, "What are the actions that we need to be taking across the healthcare system to make sure people can access the services they need, and, breaking that down into local action, what things do we have to do to make sure people can get to health services in this location?" It is about looking at it as an integral part of reducing health inequalities.

Dr Offord: We will move on to the DWP.

Paul Williams: The Director-General for Operations is responsible for delivery of DWP’s services to the public and responsible for the customer service. Our Director-General for Strategy is responsible for the Office for Disability Issues, which has an important cross-Government interest in accessibility issues for people with disabilities. So, it is those two accountabilities.

Q136 Dr Offord: One of the next questions leading on from that is: how do you work with other Government Departments to reduce accessibility issues?

Paul Williams: Well, policy change is cleared across Government through Cabinet committees. Our Office for Disability Issues has worked with the Department of Transport on their recent accessibility action plan, in relation to access for disabled people. So we do work across Government. We will work with major transport companies and others engaged in improving transport links for individuals.

To give an example, we have just completed the Greener Journeys campaign in January where Jobcentre Plus worked with major bus companies-Arriva, First, Stagecoach, National Express-and we launched Bus for Jobs across the whole of the country. That offered free bus travel in January to holders of JCP’s travel discount card. Initial estimates are that somewhere in the region of 45,000 free bus journeys were made, with particularly high take-up in the north-east. We will work with Government Departments and we will work with Department for Transport, but we will also work with providers in the labour market.

Q137 Dr Offord: What about the other two Departments?

David McVean: Again, I would echo of what Paul has said. We work very closely, obviously, with the Department of Transport, particularly on active travel and sustainable travel initiatives. We would work with DWP. For example, we have been rolling out the Pupil premium to schools for the last couple of years. We are working very closely on that. We may come on to that a bit later on perhaps. But we also work with local government as well. I know that wasn’t part of your question, but we work very closely with the local government to understand-

Dr Offord: Another arm of Government is the local government.

David McVean: Indeed. We would work with Environment. We would work with DCMS on access to sporting issues as well. We work very closely with other-

Q138 Dr Offord: Do you have any examples from DCMS in particular?

David McVean: It is not my particular area, but I do know that we’ve been working closely with DCMS on the sport legacy following from the Olympics, and I know colleagues are working on announcements around that as well. From my division, we have been feeding odd bits and pieces into that around how the transport would-

Q139 Chair: What does it consist of?

David McVean: I am afraid I don’t know, Chair. It is not something I am close enough to, but I will get someone in the Department to send the Committee a note.

Dr Offord: Yes, that would be useful.

Flora Goldhill: From the Department’s point of view, as the others have said, we work very closely with CLG. Primary care trusts now are a statutory consultee for local planning, and that will transfer to the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups from 1 April.

We work very closely with the Department for Transport and we published the Active Travel Strategy and National Cycle Plan with them. We also worked with CLG on the national planning policy framework to make sure that it reflected the health dimension. We also are working with DCMS on the legacy from the Olympics. In the Department of Health we work very hard to promote our own agenda around good health and wellbeing by thinking about it from the dimension of, "Well, what are they trying to do? How can we complement each other?" We are always looking for opportunities to work with other Departments to get that synergy and join up services and join up thinking.

Q140 Dr Offord: Individually, do you think the Department for Transport have championed the accessibility agenda? Do you think they could be pushing this more or promoting it more?

Chair: You can say "yes" or "no".

David McVean: I think it is very difficult. I think if money were no object, then accessibility doesn’t become a problem. We made some estimates with the Department of Transport when we were looking at some work we were doing jointly on the Youth Parliament, which was a great report was produced by some very talented young people. But we set a price tag that none of us in the country could afford to create concessions for 16 to 18-year-olds. I do think they push it as hard as they can, but the affordability and the economic climate is a severe limitation.

Q141 Dr Offord: I come to my final question. What do you think we all need to ensure greater cost cutting working across Government on accessibility? You mentioned the finance in the Department of Transport and you have also mentioned about the Department of Transport itself. Are there any other Departments you think should be involved?

Flora Goldhill: I think certainly Communities and Local Government and the links to local authorities and the planning system is a very important connection to make. Clearly we all need to be joining up and thinking about this as a much more holistic approach to accessibility and how access to one group of services or facilities can support access to others.

Paul Williams: I think the local authorities and the local transport teams are critical to engage people locally and support communities that need help the most.

David McVean: I would agree with all those points, but the thing I would add is, notwithstanding the point about online and access there, having gov.uk as a single portal for citizens to understand where to get information is a step in the right direction. As Flora said, I think there is more that we could all do to try to channel our communications in a way that is easily accessible.

Q142 Chair: Just before we move on, in view of what you said about the Youth Parliament and the recommendations they made about concessionary travel and the importance of travel for young people, do you think that you are accurately, within not just the Department of Education but across all the Departments, looking at access particularly for young people? Is that anybody’s responsibility to do that?

David McVean: The answer from my Department is certainly a "yes". I mean, youth services, whether it is accessibility or education, is almost like the writing on Blackpool rock: it runs through the Department. We are all looking at youth; obviously not in early years, but actually thinking about how they become youths later on. How does that all weave through everything we do as a Department? We have a director-general who looks after that sort of area as well, and he has tried to pull all that together. Yes, I would say very much so; young people are very much part and parcel of our thinking almost on a day-to-day basis, going back to your very first question.

Q143 Chair: You mentioned the UK Youth Parliament. Have you done a detailed response to how to take their proposals further forward?

David McVean: We did. It was led by the Department for Transport, and that was another example of the two Departments working together. Again, I can happily send that to the Committee if you have not seen that.

Q144 Caroline Nokes: It was interesting in your answers just before now that most of you referred to local transport teams. Do you think it is fair to say that accessibility planning has never really caught on outside of local authority transport teams, and do you require your delivery bodies to consider accessibility when planning health and education or employment services?

David McVean: We do not have delivery bodies in that sense now. We used to have something like a dozen nondepartmental public bodies but, since 2010, we have brought them all in-house and we now have just three executive agencies. I would have to defer back. We have a Head of Operational Delivery in the Department. I do know we think very long and very hard about how those services are accessed.

Primarily, our focus is on-for example, the Standards and Testing Agency, about how young people get to exams and sit those exams in a secure and safe fashion. I would need to go back and see exactly how they deal with the full accessibility issue, but I do know that they think about rurality and where children get to the tests. They have local operational teams, if I can call them that, and what they do is ensure that if the child is unable, perhaps due to the weather or perhaps lack of bus services or strikes or any other aspect, they do make quite bespoke arrangements to ensure that the child can still do whatever assessment or test they are there to do.

Paul Williams: Within DWP, Jobcentre Plus district managers have their service delivery plans, and they will take account of location and accessibility in terms of transport when deciding whether those service delivery plans are fit for purpose going forward or how they could be improved.

Flora Goldhill: I would say that there is a big opportunity to do this better in health when we have the right people round the table at the health and wellbeing boards. There is a real opportunity to be thinking about transport planning as part of the wider planning around health services, and health and wellbeing services.

Q145 Caroline Nokes: Is the 2005 guidance from the Department of Transport still relevant to your Departments and do you use it? I will remind you of what they are called. There is one that is Education and Accessibility, Health Care and Accessibility, and Welfare to Work and Accessibility, all published in 2005.

David McVean: In all honesty, I do not read that on a daily basis.

Q146 Caroline Nokes: Is that a no?

David McVean: Well, I think it has probably influenced some of it because our policies generally-for example, we have extended rights office for young people. Rather than the statutory walking distances, we fund for them to have a wider choice of services and a wider choice of schools.

Caroline Nokes: Shall we cut to the chase here? Is the 2005 guidance out of date? You are allowed to say yes.

Flora Goldhill: If it is not, it would certainly need to be updated, since there has been so much change since then.

Q147 Caroline Nokes: Finally, do your Departments have the capacity to make sure that the accessibility regime is reenergised and delivered locally?

Paul Williams: I think so. That is a "yes" from DWP. We have something called the Flexible Support Fund, which is funding devolved to district managers within JCP, and I think that that has had a reinvigorating effect as opposed to previous schemes-the Travel to Interview Scheme and things like that.

Flora Goldhill: I agree. I think this is probably something that is making us all think much harder about accessibility issues, and we will certainly be feeding that back and through into the system.

David McVean: Yes, because, as I said before, we want all our schools to be accessible. We want every child to thrive, and our job is to give schools the autonomy and the freedom to do the things they need to do but have that set of measures, and I think we need to go back and just make sure that we have got the right measures for schools.

Q148 Chair: The schools have the funding and the capacity to do that?

David McVean: We have set out that we would be protecting school funding. Whether they have the capacity, it is difficult to say, because there are 20,000 schools, but we certainly expect them to be thinking-our whole mantra in the Department for Education is that we will put our trust in schools and the professionals to do the right things by their children.

Q149 Caroline Lucas: Turning specifically to education now, if that is all right. To some extent you have already answered this, but do you want to say a bit more about at what stage and to what extent does the Government consider accessibility when it starts to process an application for a free school?

David McVean: Sure. We set out a timetable for when applications come to us. There is a pro forma. There is a set of criteria that I would be happy to send to the Committee. They are well publicised. They are on our website. There are guides and everything for the proposals. When those come in they go through an assessment process, an internal sifting, which looks at the whole gamut of aspects, including accessibility. You will not be surprised if an education vision plays a very large part, but increasingly the quality of the sponsor of the proposal and the degree of innovation that they are bringing to the education system, as well as aspects like value for money, are all part and parcel to be considered.

Once we have got down to a point where we think we have sufficiently credible proposals, then we begin to get into the transport assessments. That takes place as part of the process of securing planning permission and a little bit further down the line because, as has been publicised now and again, free schools occasionally have trouble finding a site, particularly in London. So there is a series of negotiations to go through. Almost all will come with a site in mind, but it is then about negotiating with that particular owner of that site and almost always local authorities.

Q150 Caroline Lucas: I wonder how much weight is given to it in the process. You rightly indicate that you are looking at a lot of criteria when you are looking at an application for a free school. Given that local authorities and not the Department are liable for any statutory school transport costs and therefore the waiting in terms of the actual costs is not necessarily in your mind-it is going to be something that the local authority has to worry about-is there a risk that that whole issue of the siting and the transport is not given the due weight that it should be?

David McVean: They are certainly given weight.

Caroline Lucas: "Due" weight was my question.

David McVean: "Due" weight? I am not sure on that one. We do not sign off on a funding agreement until we are satisfied that all the requirements are met. The figures I have in front of me say 93% of all free schools that we have done in the last two years were major applications for planning purposes, so they undergo a transport assessment, which inevitably means working with local planning authorities. There is a process that we follow through that, using the Department for Transport guidance, looking at all the factors in there. All that plays into a kind of balanced-scorecard approach: not only is this going to add quality to the education in the area, but is it going to be accessible? Can the children get there without the mad school runs that we have seen previously? All that is a balanced goal.

Q151 Caroline Lucas: Are there any distances or lengths of time or criteria by which, even if everything else was positive about a particular school application, if there was an issue around accessibility you could envisage that that would be a sufficient contra-indication, if you like, that would mean it could not go ahead as it stood?

David McVean: We treat each one on a case-by-case basis. There is no single one fits all. If it is two miles or three miles or a certain volume of traffic, we literally do each one on a case-by-case basis.

Q152 Caroline Lucas: To give a specific example as well, one of the issues around free schools, of course, is that they can vary the length of the day-the start time and the end time. That can cause real problems when it comes to a local authority that is trying to work out consistent and coherent transport plans. What impact do you think that is having on statutory school transport provision, the fact that free schools can vary those start and end times?

David McVean: It is not just free schools that can vary that. Most schools have been able to vary that for many years but they have chosen not to, partly because the local authority has been the maintainer.

Caroline Lucas: Yes.

David McVean: This came up from the efficiency and practice review and some of the discussions I had with local authorities and the schools themselves. There are benefits to varying the school day, and I think it is a bit of a mixed bag. We have found, albeit anecdotally, that there are examples where the cost to the local authority came down because, rather than having a bus service that required one bus to be in the two places at once, they were able to stagger the trips a bit better and have a reduced cost. The bus provider was able to pick up one school at 3.05pm and another school down the road at 3.10pm. That staggering of the school times I would not say is a done deal. I would not say it is finished, but I think it is beginning to show some innovation for the schools and for the local authorities.

Q153 Caroline Lucas: You have mentioned that it was anecdotal. That is quite interesting. Are there any plans to do something less anecdotal and more rigorous in terms of trying to work out what the impact of this is, because, as you say, some places may gain from it and some may not, but in terms of getting a wider picture?

David McVean: The efficiency and practice review has taken a lot longer than we anticipated. We have some interesting case studies and some interesting learning points coming out of that as well. One of the big learning points we have identified is that local authorities do not share practice between themselves very well. If one has solved the problem of session times or has a better procurement process or has found a different way of working with their schools that has saved money, they are not sharing it very well with one another.

Part of what I hope, when we publish the report, is that we will create an environment where local authorities do talk to one another. By way of an example, in the north-east, partly coming out of the review and the discussions we held, some of the authorities in the north-east are getting together now and working collaboratively on their transport strategies; on how they might create not just five bus services but a single bus service that is much more flexible and more cost-efficient.

As a Department, no; we are trying to become just an enabling Department rather than the directive Department. We create the environment. We will enable the good practice to become more public and hope to sort of compel local authorities a bit more to be a better procurement source.

Q154 Caroline Lucas: You mentioned the report. Is that the report that was due in November 2011? If it is, when do you think the most likely date is for its time of arrival-or is it, like the usual trains from Sussex, not coming at all?

David McVean: Soon, I hope. If I might explain, the reason it has taken quite so long is that we started it not long after local authorities were beginning to come to terms with their initial budget reductions following their 2010 election. They were not ready to come to us and talk about new models and delivery and about working in partnership.

Q155 Caroline Lucas: Before the summer, would you think?

David McVean: Yes, absolutely.

Q156 Zac Goldsmith: I think the current Mayor of London and the previous Mayor of London at different times looked at the possibility of rolling out for London a kind of US-style yellow school bus scheme. Both times I believe that it ended up with the Department of Transport and both times I believe it was ruled out on cost grounds. I have not seen all the details, but I am just wondering whether or not-before I go on, I think both Mayors did settle on the basis that it was a solution to congestion more than anything else, but is that anywhere near the political agenda at the moment or has it been struck off entirely?

David McVean: At a national level, the yellow bus scheme? No, I have not been asked to go away and think about that. The example I gave about the local authorities coming together to procure a service across a much wider area is certainly one that would-if it saves money and creates a better service and makes more accessibility, I think we would want to encourage local authorities, but we would not be saying, "You must do it this way".

Q157 Zac Goldsmith: Could I ask a slightly different question? I am jumping in, but one of the biggest concerns raised with me relates to the education maintenance of this reduction or replacement-I think the figure was around £600 million before, and it is about £180 million now. It is an alternative scheme, but one of the main concerns was that this was going to inhibit people’s ability to travel to school. There were other issues as well, but that was the main concern that I think was put forward. Do you think there is a case to be made for tailoring that alternative budget much more closely for travel needs as opposed to more generic needs that the EMA needs to support?

David McVean: £560 million was the last figure for the EMAs. There is no evidence as yet that it has actively stopped young people staying on or participating, but we are not resting on our laurels. We have lodged a review to look at how the bursary is being used. The other thing I would say is that one of my other responsibilities-

Zac Goldsmith: Sorry. Can I ask you, is the bursary going to be as generic as the EMA or is it going to be more tailored around particular uses?

David McVean: The bursary allows individual providers-schools or colleges-to decide what support that young person needs. It is a bit like a pupil premium. Rather than having a kind of umbrella, "These things must happen", we are saying both in terms of the EMA and the pupil premium, "It is down to you. We will make the money available, such as we have in the climate, and you then decide what tailoring, whether that is transport or laptops or IT or other aspects".

The other example is that I have spoken to a number of further-education colleges myself who are actively putting in their own funding over and above this. Although the bursary is around £180 million, that is probably not the true figure of support that is going into young people because the providers are saying, "This is in our interests to have these young people attend", and they are putting in their own funds as well.

Q158 Caroline Lucas: You gave a good example of local authorities coming together within a region to work out travel plans, and I guess to some extent that might lead to a shift to more sustainable transport perhaps, too. But looking at that sustainability issue in particular, are there any more examples that you would have about how to reduce the pollution and congestion and parents taking kids to school by car the whole time? I know for many of us it is something that causes major problems around schools in the mornings.

David McVean: A couple, if I may; I am sorry to hark back to free schools, but part of the process of approving the free school itself is not just a transport assessment but what they tend to flow into is a travel plan for each of the schools, which I believe I made-

Q159 Chair: Can I just check on that? Is that assessment done by the Department, or is it done by the school itself?

David McVean: It is done for the school, but we have a set of consultants who work with the school, who work with the local planning authority. It goes back to your question, "Does the Department have the capacity to do this?" We have the people, but not necessarily the skills. We have consultants who come in and draw up these plans on behalf of the proposer so that the local planning authority can have confidence that they have been drawn up by credible individuals.

Those plans have contained within them quite specific targets around both sustainability and the green agenda. If I could give you one example, the Free School Norwich. One of their specific targets in their travel plan was to reduce car use from 25% of parents to 10% to 15%-the precise figure escapes me for the moment-and the school is required in their travel plan to monitor this through annual surveys, but not just reducing car use-they also have targets around increasing cycling or walking, picking up Flora’s point about the health aspects of this. Those are quite specific; not nationally driven in the sense of the Department dictates, but it is how the whole policy framework is coming together around the free school itself.

Q160 Caroline Lucas: I appreciate the example, and it is a good one, but I suppose it just feels that there is a gap between lots of well-meaning rhetoric up here and what is happening for most of us seeing it on the ground on a daily basis. Maybe it is just a question of time, I don’t know, but it just feels like it is taking an awful long time to address this, and it cannot be that difficult.

David McVean: I sort of agree with the point, but the Department put out something like £108 million on the sustainable travel plans; that was in a bidding process over a number of years, designed to do exactly the thing we had. When we evaluated that in 2010 or 2011-I forget the precise date-we only saw a 1% shift in parental attitudes to travel to school.

Q161 Caroline Lucas: Why is that, do you think? Why is it so intractable?

David McVean: It may come back to something else that we found in the efficiency review. Parents are quite anxious in the modern society about their child’s safety. We found that some local authority buses were not up to the standard that parents would want. Seatbelts, for example; although they are required and the Department for Transport sets out guidance very clearly for local authorities in their procurement in that aspect, there is still a kind of mindset among many parents. As a parent myself, I fully understand it. "Is my child not just accessing the school, are they going to get there and back safely?" I think that is a hard shift to make. I am not sure the national rhetoric will shift it. It does require the local-

Q162 Caroline Lucas: Maybe it is about integrating with other plans, isn’t it, like 20-mile-an-hour limits or the whole wider transport environment is a safer one than-

David McVean: Yes, and it is that local decision-making. It is that local influence, the local authorities and the schools themselves encouraging parents to have their child walk to school or to cycle to school and not bring the car.

Q163 Caroline Lucas: I am just mindful of time, so just a last final question, Chair, was about Sure Start, and concerns that Sure Start centres are consolidating and some closing altogether. The question is whether or not the Department is looking at what that means for accessibility if those Sure Starts are consolidating in fewer places.

David McVean: When I spoke to my Early Years colleagues in advance of this meeting-29 Sure Start centres have closed, but your point is about the mergers and everything else. One of the duties on the local authority is about securing sufficient childcare in their areas. There is guidance we put out that asked them to look at how parents access those services at a reasonable cost. Again, we look to the local authorities rather than from the Department. We set out statutory guidance, "These are the things we expect you to look at", and they are required to report to the Department annually. We are only just in that process of now looking at those reports and seeing what is going on, particularly as we are looking at the rollout of the two-year childcare as well. But I would also say that-

Q164 Caroline Lucas: When you are looking at that, will you be looking at it from an accessibility perspective as well as overall provision?

David McVean: I am sure we would be, yes.

Q165 Chair: But how will you be doing that?

David McVean: I am not close enough to that. It comes back to our central core point, our purpose as the Department. We want to ensure every child thrives, and if you are spending several hours on the bus there and back every day, there is evidence that says that that is not a great environment for the child; never mind the behaviour and discipline aspect that you go through. It is not just about settling for the model we have. We announced a few weeks ago that, apart from looking at Sure Start children’s centres, we want more schools to become childcare hubs so that they are more local for the parents.

Q166 Chair: How are they more local than Sure Start centres?

David McVean: As local authorities are consolidating, it is possible that those services will be more remote from others. Just to give a sense, what we are doing is supporting local authorities through an organisation called Achieving Two Year Olds, which helps the local authority map where their Sure Start centre is and where their parents are. It does come back to another theme-I appreciate it is not early years, but it is relevant-that local authorities are quite poor in using their information: knowing where their children’s centres are, knowing where the children live and knowing where the bus stops are, for example.

Caroline Lucas: It does not sound like rocket science.

David McVean: The ironic thing is that all of that data is made freely available through the Public Sector Mapping Agreement to every local authority who wants to use it. When we started the review on transport in 2010, less than half were aware of it. Part of what we have been doing is making them more aware of how, for an investment of a few hundred pounds, maybe £1,000, in the software-we do not purchase that for them-they can begin to make services more accessible and still save money. One example, East Riding have, they claim, saved over £1 million since 2006 but have still improved their bus service.

Q167 Peter Aldous: Just turning to the Department of Health, I think Ms Goldhill will maybe answer these questions. The new NHS structure: what effect do you think it is going to have on the way that transport accessibility is considered?

Flora Goldhill: Certainly there is a big opportunity for that to happen. The Clinical Commissioning Groups will be members of the health and wellbeing boards, where these kinds of things can be discussed and integrated into the planning for health and care, so there is a big opportunity to do this better in the new system.

Another development that I will just mention is the introduction of Healthwatch England and local Healthwatches. I think we mentioned a few times how important it is to get users’ views into service development and to get that in from a very early stage. Local Healthwatch will be a conduit for doing that. Local Healthwatch also has a place on the health and wellbeing boards, so they can also bring the patient and community view to bear in the planning process.

Q168 Peter Aldous: Moving on, when decisions are being taken on health service reconfigurations-and, for instance, you might look at congenital heart surgery-what guidance is there to help decision-makers weigh up transport accessibility issues against improved health outcomes?

Flora Goldhill: The Department has produced guidance on the service reconfiguration. It is called Changing for the Better, and it does expect every aspect to be taken into account, including accessibility. However, I have to say that the view is that when reconfiguration issues are considered, this is not always done as well as it could be. I think there is a need for a greater focus on the accessibility issues. However, just talking about the children’s heart services, I do understand that was an issue that was very much taken into account before the recommendations were made.

Q169 Peter Aldous: Thank you. If we just move on to public health, what role will the new directors of public health have with regards to transport?

Flora Goldhill: The one thing that I pick up in what David was saying-I know Directors of Public Health will be passionate about the 20-mile-an-hour speed limit. There is a huge amount of evidence on how that saves lives, and that is exactly the sort of thing that they will want to be promoting as employees of the local authority. They will be the advocate for improving public health in local communities, and they will be the main source of advice to the elected members on health-so an important role and one that we are very excited about. They will be backed up by Public Health England, who will be putting out as much evidence as they can about good practice, what works, and making it as accessible as possible to local authorities with the Director of Public Health in the lead.

Q170 Peter Aldous: When public health directors are up and running, how do you see the active travel agenda linking to the accessibility agenda?

Flora Goldhill: If I can try to link a number of the things that I have said, it is about what people need; how they access services. It is about their experience. It is about mapping all of that out and bringing it together in the assessment of what a local community needs, and if things are not working, that is where the focus should be.

If accessibility is a problem, there is a big opportunity for the Director of Public Health to point out how accessibility is inhibiting access to services and how, by introducing things that can work better for users, services will deliver better. It goes back to some of the things that David has been saying about education. Directors of Public Health are passionate about delivering better health for their communities, just as the Department is passionate and the NHS Commissioning Board and the CCGs are passionate about improving health. It is about, from the Department’s perspective, through Public Health England, supporting Directors of Public Health with tools, evidence, best practice and that sort of thing.

Q171 Peter Aldous: Given that hospitals are the least accessible public service by foot or bicycle, is it possible to have active travel to hospitals?

Flora Goldhill: It would be possible for groups of people to have active travel. There is quite a big discussion to be had around that, because often people who are visiting hospitals are people whose health is not good, for whom perhaps active travel is not the first mode of travel that they would be thinking about. They are often people who are taking children to hospital or who are accompanying older people to hospitals; so, active travel may not be the first port of call, so it is important that patient transport systems do exist and that the commissioners of services from hospitals are cognisant of how people are going to get to the services.

The other thing that I would just like to mention is the NHS Constitution, which sets out what people’s rights are and people have rights of access to treatment within a certain amount of time. Hospitals and commissioners will want to deliver those rights for patients, but it would be a serious problem for them if they are in breach of some of the things that they are required to do around access.

Q172 Peter Aldous: You beat me to it. I was coming on to the NHS Constitution and the pledge therein, but I don’t think the pledge specifies what it means in transport terms. Can you just elaborate on that?

Flora Goldhill: It is not specifically about transport. The access is about waiting times; it is about how long you have to wait. That is the interpretation of "access". That is the explanation that we have obtained from lawyers. However, in order to deliver that access, you need accessibility; so I think they go hand in hand.

Q173 Peter Aldous: Have you set maximum travel times to get to health services in that or not?

Flora Goldhill: No, we have not. This comes back to what the patients’ experiences are and pulling that all together, and through local Healthwatch, informing local activity, and if there is a national issue, through Healthwatch England making sure that we are hearing it. But there are many ways that the Department will hear that there are problems that cannot be dealt with locally. If this is a bigger problem that we need to address, I am sure Healthwatch England will bring it to our attention.

Q174 Peter Aldous: We are seeing a greater involvement of the private sector in providing non-emergency patient transport services. Do you see this as a first step towards bringing together all the different types of transport to be provided by local authorities?

Flora Goldhill: There is an opportunity there. Again, it is about what is good practice in planning, and we are encouraging that kind of approach at national level to make sure that not just the users get the best service, but the taxpayer gets the best value as well for the money they are spending on different transport services. Where we can integrate them, we ought to be thinking about that and encouraging it.

Q175 Neil Carmichael: Given that maternity in my constituency is seeing an increased number of home births and there is emphasis on independent living for elderly people, what kind of pattern of transport do you think we need to be thinking about to accommodate the needs that will arise from those two developments and others?

Flora Goldhill: Thank you for raising that, because it is very important-about moving services closer to people’s homes where people want to use services. That is a very important component in planning services. Not only is it better for the individual patient or mother, but it also delivers high-quality services, a better experience and a better quality of service. It also reduces the need to travel, which is part of the longer-term sustainability agenda.

It is also important in the sense that, as we develop things like telehealth and telecare, that will also reduce the amount of travel and give people the opportunity to get a wider range of information than they might otherwise have had. In terms of home births, it is more about the workforce travelling to the mother. In terms of services closer to home, they should be higher-quality and they should be better value for money, and there is an opportunity for innovation linked to telehealth and telemedicine.

Q176 Martin Caton: Mr Williams, you have told us, as has the Chief Executive of Jobcentre Plus, that in the future the Jobcentre network will be smaller, with greater use of call centres and the internet. You have told us also that accessibility has been taken into account in developing this new model. Can you tell us a bit more about how you have ensured that accessibility is taken into account?

Paul Williams: I mentioned district managers and service delivery plans and the work that they will do locally to decide on the best balance of services. If I could take a step back from that, I have explained the Universal Credit will be digital by default, and I talked about our preferred channel of contact and the range of internet, telephone and face-to-face channels that we have. We also understand, and research has shown, that face-to-face contact between a JSA claimant and their personal advisor is important in getting claimants to work more quickly and also in making sure that they report changes of circumstance more quickly. That face-to-face element is still very important to what we do to make sure that claimants get back into work and back into the labour market as quickly as possible.

Within the overall context of DWP looking to reduce the size and cost of its estate, we still have a Jobcentre Plus network. If I could just share with you some figures, there are currently 722 Jobcentres; in 2010 it was 741, and then going back to 2006 it was 823. Where we have rationalised, it was often where we have more than one Jobcentre in one town and, as volumes have changed and the way we engage with our customers has changed, we have been able to reduce.

Q177 Chair: In some cases you have reopened Jobcentres, having closed them because they weren’t necessary.

Paul Williams: Yes, and I mentioned the district managers, service delivery plan and the approach of devolving more decisions to district managers locally where we can through the Flexible Support Fund. Those kinds of changes are still consistent with the overall approach of rationalisation. Another important change of approach is that we will look, where we can, to co-locate so that, if we can share premises with the local authority that will offer a one-stop shop perhaps for local citizens and still maintain services to a community without necessarily the expense of a bespoke Jobcentre, we would certainly pursue that.

Q178 Martin Caton: Are more closures in the pipeline?

Paul Williams: The DWP business plan for 2012 to 2015 talks about reducing our estate by 60 buildings in 2012-13 to make a saving of £40 million per annum. I would imagine that some of those will be Jobcentres where we co-locate, but many of them will be buildings where we are rationalising our estate as we change the way we deliver our overall business.

Face-to-face contact is still important. I mentioned that report earlier that found that, without that face-to-face contact during the first 13 weeks of a claim, a claimant on average would claim for between six and seven days longer than they would with that face-to-face contact. So, face-to-face contact is still an important bit of what we do. Of those 60 buildings, there will be some Jobcentres, but many more than Jobcentres.

Q179 Peter Aldous: I do not want to get too parochial, but there is a particular case in the east of England with ATOS and their work assessments, in that people across Norfolk and North Suffolk have to travel into Norwich for assessments. Obviously, a lot of the people will be disabled. ATOS then have leased premises a long way from any public transport, with no parking provisions outside the premises and on an upper floor with no lift. You are dealing with people who often are disabled and not able to get up stairs. I just wondered, in those sorts of situations, if there is an adequate system in place, because clearly there accessibility was not taken into account.

Paul Williams: I understand the problem, and DWP contracts for its medical services with ATOS. Where a claimant will find it very difficult to get into the centre for testing there is provision for home visits. I know that happens, but I know it is not the norm. We are about to re-contract for our medical testing services, and, rather than one national supplier, I think there will be a number of lots that we will contract for. I know that some of those providers are thinking about delivering that service in a different way.

Q180 Mark Lazarowicz: On that very point, I am sure, Mr Williams, you have heard other examples around the country, as we MPs have, of similar kinds of stories. While it is true that the contract is being renegotiated, as you tell us, and hopefully these points will be taken on board, doesn’t this suggest that this was a classic example of how there wasn’t a joined-up approach to accessibility issues? From the start, this should have been high up, whoever gave the contract to ATOS, to make sure there was this type of issue taken on board. What concerns me is not this issue of the assessments at ATOS; it is an issue of you take people away from the groove in which they are thinking and they do not think about accessibility beyond that. This seems to me a classic example of that happening.

Paul Williams: I do take the point about joined-up. Part of the contract when it was let would be about providing a service that is able to fulfil that service to people within a given area, as would Work programmes and Work programme contracts and locations, as with Jobcentres. I take the point about the possibility of a more joined-up approach.

Q181 Caroline Lucas: Will that be in a new specification, then? It is not going to happen by itself, and the one that we have just heard about should clearly never have happened. What real assurance can there be that greater scrutiny will be given to that aspect in future?

Paul Williams: I will take the point back and ask our contracting commissioning people to think about how we look across DWP services. I am sure we do it and contracts are fairly standard things, but I do take the point that, as the way we deliver our services expands, then a consistent approach to accessibility is important.

Q182 Chair: I refer back to my very first question. Who in each of the Departments has the overall responsibility for making sure that this is factored in? It seems that if there is so much deregulation going on, whether it is for free schools or for different parts of DWP. Who has that responsibility for putting forward the plan? I think it would be perhaps helpful if you could-

Paul Williams: Within DWP, the Director-General for Operations is responsible for contracted services as well as JCP services. I know that some medical examination centres are in Jobcentres, but the nature of a national service is that availability of premises in locations will vary.

Chair: I think it might be helpful to know what is in the specification that he works from, but I must return to Martin Caton.

Q183 Martin Caton: I think we are all on the same line here, and it comes back to my first question, which is asking if you could give us some more details of how you ensure accessibility is high on the agenda. You have told us that the managers of the Jobcentres have to take it into account. What does that mean? Is it just, "Accessibility, tick", or do they do some research? Do they look into different options and score accessibility against other potential sites?

Paul Williams: If we are talking about accessibility in terms of an individual jobseeker and helping them overcome barriers to get to work and to remain in work once they have it, then I can give you plenty of examples of where we are doing that day to day. On the other hand, if you are talking about the location of the Jobcentre, which is my area of expertise, to be frank, they haven’t changed that much over the years. When I say they haven’t changed, I mean that they haven’t changed in location that much over the years. We have continued to locate within the communities we serve as far as possible. Individual managers, district managers, would not have that kind of flexibility over location.

Q184 Mark Lazarowicz: Can I come back on a point? I appreciate this may not be within your remit at all, but it just might illustrate a problem that some Jobcentres, as you say, have been there for decades. In my experience, certainly in my area around Edinburgh, most have over years acquired and been giving access to people with disabilities in various ways and that has been done because they are fairly permanent offices. But the more we move to a system where different aspects are contracted out, the more important it will be when you contract bits out that they also meet the standards of access that have become pretty common within the Jobcentre estate more generally. Again, I have a concern that there isn’t a system to ensure the same type of accessibility is built into a service that has been contracted out. Is that the case?

Paul Williams: I am sure it must be in the specification, but I do not have the specification with me, so I would need to check.

Chair: But you will let us have the specifications?

Paul Williams: Yes.

Q185 Martin Caton: Mr Williams, right at the beginning of this session, you painted a really heart-warming picture of Jobcentre Plus staff taking the elderly and the vulnerable by the hand and taking them down a rosebed path to the promised land where they understand new technology, they can use the internet, giving them much better contact with their friends and families and grandchildren. It sounds wonderful, and I am sure there is a truth in it; that will be one aspect of what happens.

But we know, from what is happening in our surgeries-and we know from what the Citizen’s Advice are telling us about the numbers going to them-that there are large numbers of those vulnerable and elderly people and many do not have use of internet. They are not happy even dealing with something on the telephone. They want face-to-face contact. Even ones that have the internet and can use it and use it for other purposes-again, we get this in our advice offices-will want to come and talk it through with somebody.

I welcome what you said in the previous answer-that you recognise that face-to-face contact is important. What I wonder is whether you have any way of assessing how much capacity you need for doing that. I can see the direction you are travelling with new technology; I can’t see, from anything you have said so far and other things we have said, how you are making sure that you can properly cope with that increasing demand.

Paul Williams: I think we are doing a lot, if I may say so. The vulnerable and the disadvantaged people are not able to access IT in the way that they would like and we would like. We are putting in place support mechanisms, and they are real support mechanisms. The internet access devices that have been placed in every Jobcentre over the past six months are there to be used and for us to assist claimants to use them to access IT.

Within our local communities there are a variety of organisations that will do the same, but I appreciate that sometimes some of us need a little bit more help and support with doing that. I went to Chippenham Jobcentre the other day, and they were telling me about the local authority and an initiative they are going to introduce for digital champions. As part of that, the local authority and Jobcentre, the digital champion was going to work in Chippenham Jobcentre a couple of days a week to support customers with the internet access devices.

Q186 Martin Caton: I think all that is good and that is obviously a real option for some people, but do you accept that there are some people, however much you help them, who are not going to go down that road?

Paul Williams: Yes, and I think that is why a face-to-face service will always need to remain. I mentioned our DWP visiting service to the most vulnerable. We have something like 1,000 staff engaged in going out to claimants’ homes where, for various reasons- perhaps to claim their pension, the pension credit-they are not able to do their business with us in any other way. Yes, I recognise that there will be a minority of people who have to engage with us face-to-face, particularly the most vulnerable and those customers with health issues. You will be aware that Jobcentre Plus is dealing more and more now with customers who have health issues.

Q187 Neil Carmichael: Recognising the need for face-to-face contact, which we all do, presumably you welcome the extension of broadband access, because that is going to help a lot of people in rural areas. One would have thought, certainly in my constituency, access to broadband is of critical importance.

Paul Williams: Absolutely, and a colleague earlier asked about varying broadband speeds and the difficulty that can cause with connections-not just with accessing public services but all services.

You asked about young people earlier. Clearly, young people have accessibility issues to a greater degree, because they are more likely not to be car owners. They are more likely not to have passed their driving test, and insurance is an issue. I just wanted to bring to the Committee’s attention the Jobcentre Plus discount travel card that came in on the back of the 2003 Making the Connections report. We have agreed with the national train operators for a 50% discount on all rail travel. Initially, it was for youngsters, for New Deal, but since then it has been extended and now it is available to everybody claiming Jobseekers Allowance once they have been claiming for 13 weeks or more. That service has been running for 10 years, and estimates are that there are 20,000 active Jobcentre Plus travel discount card users in the system.

Chair: That is helpful; thank you.

Q188 Martin Caton: I do accept that is a good initiative, but, moving on from getting to the Jobcentre to thinking of enabling people to get to work, the Campaign for Better Transport told us in evidence that Jobcentre staff often do not recognise the difficulties that people reliant on public transport face. Are Jobcentre Plus advisors trained to help people deal with their transport issues?

Paul Williams: Yes. It is part of their day-to-day work. In some locations, transport issues are more of a barrier than others-south London compared with Devon and Cornwall, for example. Advisors will have different approaches, but every one of our advisors has the Department for Transport route planner on our intranet, so they are able to call up quickly and easily the fastest route. We spend considerable amounts on supporting claimants’ travel to interviews and claimants’ travel to training each year.

I evangelised a little bit about the Flexible Support Fund earlier and some of the good work that is happening in a variety of ways in different communities and localities. To give you an example, in south-west Wales, the district manager is grant funding a company or organisation called Right Direction Solutions Incorporated, and that is providing free transport for customers living in rural areas to access specific work opportunities in Swansea for the first four weeks of employment. I could give you a number of examples like that from all over the country where district managers are assessing the need in their labour markets and coming up with innovative solutions to address those issues.

Q189 Martin Caton: I represent one of the Swansea constituencies, so I was aware of that initiative, and it is good.

Do you require Work programme providers to identify means of transport for getting to work, or do you require them to help with transport costs?

Paul Williams: Yes, we do. Work programme providers are contractually responsible for travel as well as some other costs-childcare, caring costs, support costs-while the participant is on the Work programme. An element for travel costs is included within the funding received from DWP, and that is part of the overall contract package. The contractor should advise participants of the evidence they need to claim refunds of travel costs when they start the provision. So, we do.

Q190 Martin Caton: Have you been collecting data on how much of an issue getting to work is for those on the Work programme?

Paul Williams: No, I am not aware that we have. I asked some of my contracting colleagues if they had been aware of many complaints from Work programme participants about travel, and the answer I received was no, it was not a huge source of complaint. There is an issue about use of the JCP travel discount card in that we can only issue that card up to the time that the claimant starts with the Work programme. That is because of cross-funding issues, but Work programme contractors are responsible for funding those travel costs.

Q191 Chair: I think we have reached the end, but your last comment just raises an issue about the difference between people who are on the Work programme and travel costs. You might have somebody who might be required under the Work programme to work on a zero-contract-hours basis, where there was not necessarily any pay coming in, and whether or not the support for travel would apply in those circumstances. I think my question is how much you or people on your behalf in this de-regulated world are doing and how much they are linking up with the wider travel transport needs.

Paul Williams: The Work programme is responsible for providing those travel costs. Where travel costs are appropriate, where the personal advisor within the Work programme judges that it is important to support the claimant financially to go for that job interview or to take work in that contract-and if that job is likely to last for six months, the Work programme can then claim the higher sustainability payment-I would expect the Work programme personal advisor to be making that judgment about what is appropriate and what is value for money for the customer and for the Work programme.

Chair: Okay; thank you for that. Just one final thing. You have all talked about the role of local authorities and meeting some of the local requirements. I am very conscious of time, but if any of you have any experience or examples of how within your Departments account has been taken of the increased costs for local authorities as a result of changes in your policies, particularly where there is deregulation, it would be very interesting to have some kind of indication-not necessarily now, but in writing-of what is fed, perhaps through the Cabinet Committee in terms of DCLG, in terms of expectations about how various needs will be met at a local level.

But at this stage, I welcome the fact you have been able to come and give evidence on behalf of your respective Departments. It is a huge agenda that we are attempting to face with this inquiry, and I thank each of you very much indeed for giving up your time this afternoon.