02 July 2004
Up to 11,000 civil service posts could be slashed following this week's overhaul of benefits and pensions processing at the Department for Work and Pensions – a third of the job cuts targeted by the Treasury.
But as news emerged that further cuts have already been identified, senior staff claimed that the job cull announced by Work and Pensions Secretary Andrew Smith on June 29 will seriously affect services.
Managers told Public Finance it will be 'nigh on impossible' to implement the required 30,000 job cuts across the department by 2008 without adversely affecting services such as the New Deal.
Unions claim pensioners, who could be denied access to local services and may have to travel hundreds of miles to their nearest administration centre, will feel the biggest impact.
Mark Serwotka, leader of the Public and Commercial Services union, Whitehall's largest, said: 'These cuts will impact on every community in the UK, damaging services and local economies.'
Smith announced that most of the benefits processing work at 550 offices will now be moved to the 100 sites unaffected by the cuts.
Unions and managers believe that could account for 6,000 posts. A further 5,000 may be slashed under plans to axe ten of the 29 pension centres, including large sites at Liverpool and York. Smith placed no timescale on the changes.
Many staff will be transferred to other DWP work but a programme of redundancies, voluntary or otherwise, will follow.
Smith said the cuts were designed to free resources for frontline services. 'While any
job losses are regrettable, improving efficiency will release resources to make further progress on child and pensioner poverty,' he argued.
DWP permanent secretary Sir Richard Mottram admitted the changes would be 'unsettling'. In a departmental memo, endorsed by Smith and obtained by PF, he also indicated where the next set of cuts will be made.
'Looking ahead, there will be further pension centres surplus to requirements. We envisage some of these will be transferred to other parts of the DWP and to other government departments.
'We cannot rule out the possibility of some further centres closing in the future,' he wrote.
PFjul2004
