- All AO’s in WSD (excluding Visits, Access to Work and National Partnership Team and the staff recently allocated to Contact Centre satellite sites)
- All EO’s in WSD (excluding most Work Coaches, Visits, Access to Work and National Partnership Team).
- EO Work Coaches are eligible to apply in the following Districts only
- Surrey and Sussex
- Devon Cornwall & Somerset
- Thames Valley
- Cumbria and Lancashire
- East Anglia
- Midland Shires
4. All HEO, SEO and Grade 7 staff in WSD (excluding Visits, Access to Work and National Partnership Team).
How many in each grade?
Management are anticipating that staff will be allowed to leave by grade as follows:
- AO’s - up to 2,100
- EO’s - up to 1,100
- HEO to Grade 7 - up to 350
In addition small scale voluntary exit schemes will be run in BD, NSD and UC aimed only at AA’s and a handful of senior managers in NSD. AA’s who have already applied to earlier exit scheme are not able to apply to this scheme Also AA’s in PIP and DLA are not eligible to apply.
Why are DWP doing this?
DWP claim that in 2015/16 they will have 7,000 more staff in WSD than they will need. This is mainly as a result of year on year cuts to departmental budgets and also to the ongoing falls in the JSA register. DWP would have preferred to allow more staff to leave WSD but 3,500 exits is the most that MyCSP is able to handle at any one time.
PCS says DWP needs more staff not less
At a time when DWP is actually recruiting new staff and even resorting to bringing in temps from the Brook Street Bureau, it is madness for DWP to say it needs to run such a massive exit scheme. All over DWP members are under enormous pressure to deliver more with less. They are routinely threatened with PIP’s and face ever-increasing targets and benchmarks.
Can WSD cope?
PCS does not accept that WSD can cope with losing over 3,000 staff overnight. This will put even more pressure on the staff remaining and will degrade the service we can deliver to customers. Earlier this year DWP allowed too many staff to leave on Voluntary Exit schemes and then had to recruit staff to replace those they had allowed to leave. It is only too likely that they will end up doing the same again
Falling unemployment
It is true that unemployment has been reducing recently but any staff that may be saved as a result could be redeployed into other parts of DWP to relieve the pressure elsewhere and remove the need for unwelcome measures like agency temps and increased privatisation of our work. Also unemployment can go up as well as down and it makes no sense in the long term to lose so many experienced and skilled staff in such a volatile economic climate.
Government budget cuts
Falling unemployment is only one reason behind this exit scheme. The main reason is that year on year since 2010 DWP has faced savage cuts to its staffing budgets. DWP now employs 30,000 staff less than it did in 2010. This reduction is almost exclusively the fault of the government’s cuts to DWP budgets. Once again it is staff in the public sector who have to pay the price of the economic crash in the private sector.
Terms of the Exit Scheme
The terms of the exit schemes will be the standard terms as used in all other recent voluntary exit schemes. Any individual exit that is estimated to cost over £100,000 will be subject to a specific review by the Treasury. Not all staff who apply will be allowed to leave and some staff are likely to be deemed business critical, particularly those in Job centres close to areas where DWP is expanding.
Pay 2015
The last day of service for staff leaving under this scheme will be 30 June 2015. Under DWP rules, this will mean that they will not be eligible to receive any of the 2015 DWP pay award including the non-consolidated payment relating to the current performance year.
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