WSD CEG ER Formal

PCS from across the area met with management for Work Services in the Central England Group yesterday, 19 February 2015.

Although we are now meeting monthly there are still problems with no agendas, action points or decisions from the last meeting available until just before the meeting and therefore we don't know what we are supposed to be discussing and with who. We discussed this and hopefully this will improve in future.

We discussed attendance management and management assured us that the policy must be followed and there is no automatic referral to a decision maker after 28 days of continuous absence. If this is happening we need to know and the CEG HRBP will look at cases where this happens or any other case where policy has been ignored. The stress group will also be reactivated to investigate levels of stress and to try and come up with ways to reduce it.

Equality and diversity statistics for last years box markings are now available.  The format makes the figures difficult to understand and it is a long time since the end of year.  Hopefully we can get figures earlier this reporting year.

Universal Credit rollout is starting in CEG.  We have dates for tranche 1 & 2.  There then follows a pause so the pressure on releasing staff for training during peak summer leave is less than it could have been.  Management are keen to honour the commitment to two continuous weeks leave in the summer for all staff who want it. Leave levels of 18-20% is the guideline as a starting point for all sites in CEG. If this is not the case in your office or agreed leave is cancelled we need to know.

We then discussed staffing.  We do not know the figures for next year yet but the VES exercise and band B to C progression will have a significant impact on band B numbers in particular.  We should be getting more meaningful staffing figures in future to inform our discussions.

We discussed ESA claimants.  We were assured that segmentation should take place and a strong message that claimants should be rung first to ensure that they were suitable and they knew why they were being invited in.