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5/11/04 Letter to the Secretary of State - Reductions in DWP staffing levels: impact on the Child Support Agency
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Archive - November 2004. To Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP, Secretary of State
Department for Work and Pensions
05 November 2004
Reductions in DWP staffing levels: impact on the Child Support Agency
First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your appointment as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and look forward to working with you in the future.
I am taking the step of writing to you at this point in connection with the reductions in staffing numbers within DWP proposed under the 2004 Comprehensive Spending Review. In particular, I feel it is important to express the grave disquiet of One Parent Families at ongoing and future staff reductions within the Child Support Agency.
Over the past year, One Parent Families has heard from many lone parents – many desperate, many angry – about their difficulties in obtaining child maintenance through the Child Support Agency. Most striking has been the proportion of lone parents who have applied for child maintenance under the new scheme, but who have faced major delays in getting their applications dealt with, and in getting prompt compliance and enforcement action taken by the Agency. As you will know, figures show that less than half of all applications were cleared in the first fifteen months of the new system, and in those cases which reached a calculation, only 40 per cent of maintenance due was collected in the first year.
Already staff numbers have reduced from over 12,000 at the start of 2003-04 to 10,600 today. It is hard not to conclude that this reduction in staffing levels has itself been a contributory factor in the very poor levels of service many of our members report they are receiving.
We are aware of the serious IT and telephony problems which have dogged the new system and caused major disruption to customers and staff. We are also aware that EDS and BT Syntegra are currently undertaking a recovery programme, aimed at resolving the various difficulties which have arisen. However, even when the IT and telephony systems begin to function reasonably, there are still serious backlogs of applications to be dealt with, as well as the major task (in terms of staff time and expertise) of migrating old cases onto the new system and then of applying the new formula to each individual case, and calculating a phased introduction. In the meantime, in the absence of a date set for migration and conversion, the Agency has the ongoing burden of running two business systems in parallel and dealing with unplanned ‘reactive’ migration.
Frankly, we are extremely sceptical that the Agency can reduce its staff headcount by a further 2,600 over the next two years and maintain, let alone improve, its performance in getting maintenance to children.
When the new scheme was introduced, One Parent Families was promised by Government that staff savings arising from the new, simpler formula would result in significantly more staff resources being devoted to ensuring compliance and taking prompt enforcement action. It is clear both from the many lone parents we speak to, and from the very disappointing figures in the latest CSA Annual Report on cash and case compliance under the new scheme, that this simply is not happening. We would regard it as an unacceptable breach of faith by Government if the gradual ‘freeing up’ of CSA staff time, as a result of the new, simpler system, were used not to create a new concerted focus on ensuring maintenance is paid and debts recovered, but instead to make staff cuts.
The DWP is joint owner with the HM Treasury of two key PSA targets: to improve the performance of the CSA in paying child maintenance to the poorest families , and to significantly reduce the number of children living in workless households. If these two PSA targets – crucial to meeting the Government’s 2010 goal on halving child poverty – are to be met, staffing levels must be maintained, not reduced, within the Child Support Agency.
I am copying this letter both to Baroness Hollis and to Mr Doug Smith, Chief Executive of the Child Support Agency and would be happy to meet with you to discuss our concerns on this issue.
More generally, as the new Chief Executive of One Parent Families, I would welcome the opportunity to meet you to introduce myself and discuss the work of the organisation and our contribution towards meeting the Department’s agenda on lone parent employment and overcoming child poverty.
Nicola Simpson
Chief Executive
One Parent Families
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