Barnet UNISON

The Council have been rolling out the LEAN approach across a number of Council services. UNISON has repeatedly raised with a number of senior managers that this initiative is at odds with the One Barnet approach to delivering services.

Writing on the Conservative Home Blog “Benefit claims are too complicated for call centres and computers” John Seddon writes:

“Plans for the Universal Credit will create the same failures as we are seeing in HMRC: millions of unanswered calls, backlogs and errors – costing the taxpayer billions. The proposals – a website service and a national call centre – would work if peoples’ needs were simple and unvarying; taxation and benefits are anything but.

The move represents ministers’ wrong-headed belief in economies of scale; ministers think that these ‘lower-cost channels’ (web and phone) will mean a lower-cost service. In fact, because of the inherent variety in demand (people’s problems are different) the plans will increase the volume of transactions, just as these ideas have in HMRC.”

Full article here

Benefits too complex for a Call Centre model

John Seddon letter to: Rt. Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP and Lord Freud 31st January 2011

“It would appear to be a simple proposition: take costs out of service provision by putting the provision online and/or in a call centre.  That these ‘channels’ represent cheaper transactions is not in doubt.  But it does not follow that overall the service will be cheaper to deliver.  The crucial factor is the complexity of the service.  When what is being delivered is simple and unvarying, moving it to telephone or internet channels may be effective.  When it is complex and variable, however, it is an expensive mistake, driving costs up and the quality of service down.  We can show many examples to prove this, of which the most relevant is housing benefits, of which more later. Housing benefits are not simple and unvarying; even less so will be the SUC.”

Full article here

Take a look at John Seddons evidence to the Treasury sub-Committee investigation on HMRC here:

“HMRC’s failure to pick up high volumes of calls to call centres are likewise indicative of high levels of failure demand, which will cause increasing costs and reflect poor-quality services for users

3.3.2 The assumption behind standardisation is that it will reduce costs. This is false. Management is concerned with reducing transaction costs – the cost of a telephone call or other discrete process – but the true costs of service are end-to-end from the taxpayer’s or agent’s point of view. Standardising work simply prevents the system from absorbing variety. It increases the volume of transactions (causes failure demand) and thus drives overall costs up.

4.2 Call centres, back offices, shared services, standardisation, specialisation, transaction-cost management, people management, IT-dominated processes – all these features of today’s scale approach to service reform can be shown to drive overall costs up.”

Barnet UNISON Comment

We agree that the Call Centre model will lead to an increase in ‘failure demand’ which will drive up costs. The Private Sector will recognise this as a bit of a ‘cash cow’ 

Our office has been contacted again that that decisions are being made as to who is the Call Centre. I can report that we have not had any more new details on this project. There have been some broad proposals in the past but no details. I did expect to be able to brief members earlier this month as I understood there was deadline for proposals on 3 October. However the scheduled meeting with UNISON had to be postponed.

Therefore I am unable to respond to the latest rumour that Revs & Bens are to be transferred to the Call Centre.

Barnet UNISON comment

I have passed on my concern to the project lead today that there are rumours that there is a proposal for the Revs & Bens to be transferred to the Call Centre along with Social Care Direct. I am still waiting for a response to the concerns I raised.

UNISON has always maintained that the Call Centre model is an outdated concept which has been rejected by the private sector. It is also at odds with LEAN approach to services something the Council has been promoting across a range of council services.

Former Barnet council cleaners heard this week that their employer Turners had been taken over by major private sector contract called Servest

“With its heavy focus on the public sector, Turners is a good key strategic fit for Servest as it provides diversification away from our current focus on the retail sector, providing a huge growth opportunity and long-term contracts,” said Stuart Buswell, Servest’s managing director, commercial and public sector”

Full article here

In these types of takeovers there is often a massive cut in the management and office based services. UNISON will be reporting back soon on the impact on our members.

“The interim chairman of troubled infrastructure and maintenance group Mouchel, David Sugden, has resigned four days after being appointed.”

Full story here

It is obvious there is something very serious going on for a Chair to resign so quickly after being appointed. It may explain why there have been two attempted takeovers of Mouchel earlier this week.

 FAT CATS sense an opportunity read the article here

Barnet UNISON Comment: 

What are councils like Oldham & Bournemouth doing to ensure the massive contracts they have signed are delivered without any risk to residents. Service users and the public purse.