Staffing
CCS has been significantly affected by the recent movement of staff around DWP Operations. Management acknowledged that they are currently struggling with some of their business priorities and that there could be a need for further moves around Operations.
8 Contact centres are leaving, or have recently left, CCS
- Newcastle has moved to Child Maintenance Group
- DWP Visiting Booking Centre in Cardiff will no longer become a contact centre.
- Taunton, Newport and Pembroke Dock are moving to the Fraud and Error Service.
- Bangor has become a Universal Credit (UC) site.
- Middlesbrough will move to UC from December.
- Dundee and Makerfield will also now move to UC early next year.
Staff coming into CCS
- DWP Visiting Booking Centre in Glasgow brings c.100 staff into CCS.
- 6 satellite sites in Boston, Chatham, Lancaster, Luton, Redruth and Skegness bring c. 60 staff into CCS
- 600 part time Fixed Term Appointments are being recruited into CCS, mainly to replace the staff moving to FES.
- 200 apprentices have been recruited
A further impact of all these changes is that management decided to utilise an existing contract to outsource the remaining JSA First Contact (FC) line to Capita.
PCS’ concerns on staffing
PCS has raised our concerns that all of this will leave CCS in a position where it does not have enough staff. Management contend that the recruitment, all of which is on a part-time basis, coupled with the way in which they have deployed the 200 apprentices, is designed to specifically cover Mondays and the busiest times of day, thereby making better use of their staff resource.
They also maintain that, as sites convert to UC, the call work will go with them, thus reducing the demand on CCS. The possibility of further recruitment to support the moves to UC cannot be ruled out. Management also accepted that the new recruits, all in the AO grade, would need team leaders and confirmed that this would be done by offering TDA and then taking further FTA recruits from reserve lists to backfill the TDA. However, they acknowledged that there would be continued pressure until the new recruits were in place.
Recruitment
PCS argued that the recruitment should be on a permanent basis and questioned why CCS were only offering 12 month FTA contracts when the recruitment more recently announced in other parts of Operations is being done on the basis of offering 18 month contracts. We also argued that they should use the current recruitment to bring the JSA FC work back in-house.
CCS appeared unaware that the other recruitment exercises were offering 18 month contracts. However, they stated they were doing a 12 month plan which looked at all options and changes to the service, which was why the recruitment was only for that period. The FTA staff being recruited will join on contracts that can enable them to be converted to permanency. Part of that plan will be looking at service changes over that period and bringing FC JSA work back into CCS is one of the things they will be looking at as part of that review. We expect full consultation on this review.
PCS recruitment
As the new staff are recruited local reps should liaise with local management to ensure that a trade union induction talk is provided for all of the new entrants, to ensure they are given the opportunity to join PCS.
Satellite sites
PCS raised some specific concerns about the 6 satellite sites that were coming over to CCS. When announcing the setting up of these sites, management indicated that they expected normal CCS rules to apply. All of these will be small teams of people based in Jobcentres, that will present a number of logistical problems if the normal approach to scheduling and preferences is imposed.
Management agreed to look at this, and appeared to acknowledge that there were practical issues around things like scheduling until 6pm. They confirmed that all sites will be doing JEL work, with the exception of Skegness, where they will handle SF Enquiries. Management stated that there were no firm go-live dates as yet and that all risk assessments and necessary work will be done on these sites to make them suitable for contact centre style work.
They also believed that all staff, again other than in Skegness where it was a specific team that had previously been attached to Benefits Directorate, were volunteers following Expression of Interest exercises. We advised them that in Boston, at least, it had not been done that way and that staff had been selected. They agreed to take this away and look at it, but believed that it was really an issue for WSD, who had been responsible for providing the staff to CCS.
Leave
Management believed that they had “maxed out” leave over the summer period, but accepted that there had been pressures on short notice leave and that this had been difficult to allow through into September. However, they believed that the pressure on leave was not now the same and that leave was available for people to book. The one caveat they had was their on-going belief that Monday will always be an issue. Al s a result they have targeted the current recruitment at Monday’s, stating all new recruits will be expected to have Monday as one of their working days, which should ease the pressure on Mondays in the future. They categorically denied that there was any manipulation of Workforce Manager in order to restrict access to annual leave.
They also stated that they wanted to delay decisions on leave for the festive period in order to maximise what they could allow. They stated they could make a decision in October but that “a lot of people would be disappointed”, but, if they wait until November, when the newly recruited staff were in place, they will have a better picture of the situation, and that will give them more leeway in allowing as much leave as possible.
PCS recognized the logic of waiting until the new recruits were in place before allocating Christmas leave. However, we did make it clear that if our members were advised of a delay in the authorisation of Christmas leave in order to allow as much leave as possible then that would lead to an anticipation of a significant level of leave being allowed.
80% preferences for part time staff
PCS has been seeking clarity on this issue for some time. CCS have looked into this to see how sites apply the 80% preferences for part time staff. They stated that there is not a standard position and the methods of applying the 80% preferences vary from site to site.
However they were able to confirm that all part time staff should be receiving their 80% preferences. If there is a week where this does not happen then that would be offset by other weeks where 100% preferences are given. Thereby, taken over a longer period, 80% preferences are achieved. If there are any part time members who do not believe that they are receiving their 80% preferences then they should initially raise this locally through their local rep and escalate the issue as necessary.
AHT
They confirmed that they had written to all CCS staff to advise that AHT would no longer be an individual performance metric.
Future look
Management indicated that they would be doing at lot of work in the next six months, looking at the work CCS does and how they do it, and they would consult TUS throughout the process. Part of what is being looked at is the Service Centre approach. This is already the business model in Pensions, CMG and the Disability and Carers part of Benefits, and is the way in which UC is being rolled out.
Management were keen to build on the work done in Chorlton and have formally launched, what they are now calling, Service Centre One in Derby. It is clear that a move away from the failed separation of CCS and Benefits is now beginning to take shape and we are keen that this is done in the best way possible for our members. We will keep you updated of any developments.
Focus on Mondays
It was unacceptable to find that later in the same week as our meeting with CCS management, they had written to all staff notifying them of various contingency measures, aimed at “maximizing performance to improve customer service”. CCS management did not discuss the need for any of these measures in the meeting with PCS shortly before. Our initial enquiries about this met with an, equally unacceptable response. We have now written a further letter challenging the need for these measures and making our feelings clear.
What's your thoughts or comments?
If you have any questions, examples you wish to raise or feedback/comments on anything in this article please speak to your local rep.
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