The purpose of this circular is to provide an overview of the current Staffing Position in the DCPUs and how it relates to the recent activity that has been going on to resolve the potential Turrets dispute. Members will know that the methods of working trialled in the Turrets pilot will now be rolled out to the rest of the DCPUs. However, central to this is the commitment from Senior Management to move towards more acceptable staffing levels in Helpline to reduce the reliance on turrets working.Focus will now turn to how the staffing issues, not only in Helpline but, across the DCPUs can be resolved. Over the Summer period work on hand levels increased by a third from around 75,000 cases on hand at the end of March to more than 100,000 by the height of the Summer. Whilst Summer leave and part year contracts accounted for some of this, PCS believes this is more than a temporary blip and is indicative of chronic shortages of staff in all areas. Members at the recent Turrets pilot meetings spoke overwhelmingly about the lack of staffing that was leading to most of the problems they encounter.
PCS believes that staffing levels in the DCPUs are not sufficient at this present time. Overtime is being used on a massive scale to mask these deficiencies in staffing with a staggering £568,000 and £760,000 spent on overtime in July and August alone – this is an enormous figure by anyone’s calculation and amounts to around 3 extra AOs per Command for the whole year. If we recognise that at the moment the equivalent of approximately 130 Operations staff are permanently deployed answering calls this gives us an idea of how many staff the enormous amounts spent on overtime is actually masking.
The staffing shortages manifests itself in many other ways as well. Members feel much more under pressure to deliver work which is often exacerbated by the requirement for AOs to also work on the turrets. Many members have complained about post piling up and no action being taken and this has been a recurring theme over the Summer. Stress in the workplace rises leading to issues with Attendance Management and warnings. Access to part time working arrangements and FWH can be severely restricted and members are often asked to work out of grade. Functionalisation of jobs leads to boring and monotonous work.
Senior Management are pinning their hopes on the roll out of Lean delivering enough extra capacity to deal with the shortfall between how many staff they have and how much work they have got coming in. PCS has serious reservations that Lean will actually deliver this and there is little evidence to support the employer’s view. What is clear is that DLA Claims are forecast to increase by up to 20%, Mota Claims are forecast to increase by 10% yet staffing levels are still being cut.
No one underestimates the difficulties there will be in securing staffing levels given the Ministerial pressures to cut jobs almost without regard for the impact. However PCS remains committed to campaigning for proper staffing in the DCPUs.
