The following details have been supplied by the PCS DWP Group and are an extract from a circular for Branches:

“Pensions Directorate: Progress on reducing pressure for members and on staffing

Negotiators from the PCS DWP Group Executive Committee met with senior Pensions Directorate (PD) management on Thursday 29^th September.

Carers’ Allowance in recovery

Members in Carers’ Allowance had also reported difficult working conditions. PD senior managers were aware of this and had taken steps to secure additional resources from Newcastle Pension Centre and from the Attendance Allowance Unit, to support CA. Contrary to the message given to staff locally, this extra resource is in place indefinitely until the situation has improved.

Staffing – partial success, more to be done

The need for higher staffing levels in Pensions Directorate has been a consistent position of the GEC over the last several years. In the last year, the position of senior managers, that PD is over-resourced, has shifted to one of acknowledgment that there are staffing pressures. 280 staff have been recruited from the most recent exercise, and PD have announced permanency for 400 fixed term appointments. This is very welcome news. A further tranche of 250 should land in Pensions Directorate by January 2017 and PD will be submitting a case for further recruitment as part of the Operations-wide recruitment bid for 2017/18.

Our lack of staff is raised by the GEC at every national meeting and in virtually all correspondence with management, so this is progress for our staffing campaign. The GEC will continue to identify and raise areas that need additional resources with senior managers. At points of peak work, Pensions will be more than 700 FTE understaffed.

Promotion should also be offered

Senior managers recognised that the current round of promotion from AO to EO is the first that’s been offered in years. As part of the new recruitment exercise, they are keen to offer further promotion, and this is what the GEC has asked for, on behalf of members. The approval for this has already been sought and further information will be announced once that process has completed.

Employee Deal issues

A range of issues that affect both Pensions and other areas have been escalated to the PCS Pay Team, including the lack of consultation around the Cover Tool and associated guidance. The question of 6.30pm finishes and how these work are also being discussed as part of on-going Employee Deal discussions. PCS will continue to keep members updated on this and have been clear that staffing levels should be directly related to genuine customer demand.

Pensions Directorate have put together a list of 90 teams, around which they have built their assumptions for staffing requirements at the four “tent poles” (8am, 9am, 5pm and 6.30pm). These were not subject to consultation and it is clear that in some areas (such as EO team leaders) this has led to higher numbers required for the end of the day than the business actually needs. PD management have agreed that this will now be subject to consultation. Our position continues to be late finishes can be sorted out on the basis of volunteers and team discussions, so long as the staffing figures reflect a genuine business need.

Festive leave arrangements for Christmas and New Year

Members’ Bulletin 32/16 notified all members that PD have approached the GEC about Christmas leave plans. All relevant information – forecasts of work volumes, staff needed for Christmas 2016 and actual figures from last year – will be supplied ahead of more in-depth talks, which both sides want to get sorted out as soon as possible. The recent survey of PCS members across Pensions has been extremely useful in identifying other ways staff could be allowed off, if senior managers were to take a few steps to manage workflow over this period. There seems to be scope for a bit of additional flexibility this year across teams and this will go out to branches as soon as possible.