Transcript - Quarterly Hearing with Minister for Social Security - 8 November 2019

Health and Social Security Scrutiny Panel Quarterly Review Hearing

Witness: The Minister for Social Security

Friday, 8th November 2019

Panel:

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat of St. Helier (Chair) Deputy K.G. Pamplin of St. Saviour (Vice Chair) Deputy C.S. Alves of St. Helier

Deputy T. Pointon of St. John

Witnesses:

Deputy J.A. Martin of St. Helier , The Minister for Social Security

Deputy S.M. Wickenden of St. Helier , Assistant Minister for Social Security Ms. S. Duhamel, Head of Policy and Strategic Policy Department

Mr. I. Burns, Director General, Customer and Local Services

[14:00]

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat of St. Helier (Chair):

Good afternoon, this is a quarterly hearing with the Minister for Social Security, Assistant Minister and officers from their department. The normal rules apply in relation to what would happen in the States Assembly. This is a public hearing and members of the public are invited to watch or sit within the facility. My name is Mary Le Hegarat , I am the Deputy of St. Helier and I am the Chair of this panel.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin of St. Saviour (Vice Chair): Deputy Kevin Pamplin, Vice Chair of the panel.

Deputy T. Pointon of St. John :

Trevor Pointon, Deputy of St. John , I am a member of the panel.

Deputy C.S. Alves of St. Helier :

I am Deputy Carina Alves , I am the Deputy for St. Helier District No. 2 and I am a member of the panel.

The Minister for Social Security:

Judy Martin, I am the Minister for Social Security and St. Helier No. 1 Deputy .

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

Scott Wickenden, I am Assistant Minister for Social Security and a Deputy of St. Helier No. 1.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

Sue Duhamel, Head of Policy and Strategic Policy Department.

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

Good afternoon, Ian Burns, Director General, Customer and Local Services.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

Thank you, we will move on. The first area that we are going to ask about is the Target Operating Model which we have been hearing about consistently over the last 18 months. How are you progressing with the implementation of the target operating model?

The Minister for Social Security:

That is an operational issue but it is C.L.S. (Customer and Local Services) it is not Social Security.

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

As I think we have briefed the panel before we have been going through our Target Operating Model restructuring of Customer and Local Services in 2 phases. The first phase affected mainly the teams that fall under the Minister for Social Security's legislation, i.e. the benefit processing teams and the like. That recruitment was completed in May and we are moving through design and implementation, design of training and implementation phases at the moment so we are making progress on that. We have had some bumps along the way in the road on some things but we are making progress and that progress will continue into next year. The bump in the road that I referred to there is in relation to the phone system we were hoping to use. It has some technical issues. We have a number 444444 which is very accessible and disability friendly but some of the technology we wanted to use behind that, which was you can just say what it is you want to do and you will get

through to the right person, some of that technology has not worked as well as we would like so we are continuing to test things out with the suppliers. But we hope that will be live before Christmas and that is a big thing in terms of moving that phase 1 forward. Phase 2 which covers areas that are not the responsibility of the Minister for Social Security, which are things like the library, people hub and payroll, 2 internal teams, and also the Office of the Superintendent Registrar, that second phase the consultation has been completed for the library and people hub and payroll and we are into the recruitment phase there. In fact, interviews are taking place today for some roles and the Office of the Superintendent Registrar we hope will go through their consultation starting in the next week or so. It has been held up to do with some job evaluation issues but that should happen but no one in the Office of the Superintendent Registrar is at risk. It is putting more resources into that area rather than less.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

The Minister said that the C.L.S., if you like, does not come under her responsibility, so whose responsibility does it come under, which ministerial

The Minister for Social Security:

I did not say that, I said what you asked me was an operational question about the T.O.M. (Target Operating Model), some services that are delivered at La Motte Street are obviously social security benefits, pensions and on that the T.O.M., because they have brought all the workers together, the Target Operating Model includes a lot more people than ever worked at Social Security, you have the passports, the planning, so it is across the board and there will be if it needs a Minister there will be a line up to see whatever laws or policy comes under that Minister. But the operation of the Customer and Local Services is about dealing with the public the best way we can and that is an operational issue.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

What I would like to know is how smoothly is the transition from going from having Social Security responsible, if you like, for what happens in Social Security, to now you have got a hub? How has that transition worked from the perspective of the staff within that department?

The Minister for Social Security:

Well, you can ask me and then Ian can come in where he thinks. So it is a year we have been open, One Front Door. I took the Chief Minister down there 4 weeks ago on a Friday afternoon for a couple of hours, which is still very busy at 4 o'clock, 3.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m., and looked around. So the Back to Work team is there. I cannot find anybody who does not like it and we have the statistics, there is exit interviews, people just the welcome host, I have been in there 3 times, I have got sick children at the moment, and I do not get past the door I do not need to go past the door, they tell me exactly where I they will take their sick note, check it is done and I am in and out in 2 seconds. I do not need to queue for anything. If you remember the old way, you used to have to go to that first desk to find out where you need to go, you have these welcome hosts will come to you and I would say 8 out of 10 people do not get any further than them, Ian, do they?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

It is about it is not quite as good as that but it is about - I wish it was - 300 people a day that get as far as the welcome hosts and that is as far as they need to go, so they are in and out very quickly. There is another 600 or so who will then go in, who perhaps need to speak to a more specialist adviser.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

I think what I was trying to get at was - and do not get me wrong, I think it is a good idea - but it was more about the actual managing of all of those different areas of business maybe from an operational perspective just about how it is all working in and how everything is fitting in really. It was more to get some sort of feel about how the staff feel that it is all working. I know it is probably not a ministerial question, if you like, but I thought it was quite a good opportunity to just say and I am not saying the issues but if you have something that is not working, it is about trying to navigate who is doing what, if that makes sense. It was just really to try and get a feel about the introduction of this and the fact that there is a number of individuals in charge, if you like, how that is working out really.

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

If we focus on One Front Door, which, as the Minister said, is where you have tax, you have planning, passports, customs as well as the social security ministerial benefits in that front office, they are still being served by staff from those particular areas, so, for example, if you go in for your passport you will see customs people and tax people and so on. That is great that it is all in one location, it is great that so many customers use more than one service when they visit but those people are still being individually managed by their respective team, they are on a rota basis, so it is different people. What has been really important is the communication that takes place. There is a regular weekly update for everybody in terms of everyone who works in La Motte Street, understanding therefore what is going on, what the latest news is, what changes there are, but as we have brought people in we have been able to make more changes and try to break down some of the historic activity that means customers have to go to more than one place. A great example is change of addresses, early on last year when we started off there was some examples of people wanting to change address, they would be able to change address by having to go to multiple places to give the same information and when you start thinking about it that is just not right. So that allowed us to be able to challenge some of that and make it much easier for customers to change their address and not

have to wait in 2 places at once. We have made some progress like that. Additionally, that way of working is helped in particular because of maybe driven slightly by the extra volume that customs have been experiencing because of Brexit, settled status and passport queries, but we have been able to work with them to handle their phone calls, for example. So now for the customs and passport calls, you come through to a more generic customer telephony centre rather than straight through to the passports office back in Maritime House, as it were. So that has been really positive, I think, and our customers are benefiting from that because it means there are more resources downstairs to serve customers who have come in with passport queries and Brexit queries and so on. We have also been operating a Brexit helpline as well, which was getting some calls in the build up to what was Brexit. But they are mainly around, again, settled status and passport queries. If we had gone live we would have been operating that, of course, for the whole Island in a post-Brexit scenario. There are lots of good things, I think. It gives us that capability. There are more things we need to do, more things we would want to do and other areas are still working through the Target Operating Model changes and particularly as we get down to the tiers 4, 5 and 6, I think there are more things potentially that will become more obvious that maybe can be looked from a customer centric perspective, that maybe can be done in La Motte Street or done by teams in C.L.S. on behalf of other Ministers and on behalf of other teams. That is still work in progress but it sets a direction and it does support the whole principle of one.gov, which was that we would put customers at the heart, we would design things around the customer and stop designing things around our legislation and our laws and our departments and design things around the customer.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

Could I just pick up on that then? Talking about the customer, and picking up on something that the Minister mentioned, that it is especially busy between 3.30 p.m. and 5.30 p.m., has any consideration been given to maybe opening later on certain days to make it more accessible to customers because not everybody will be able to get to C.L.S. during the day?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

Yes, our main aim there would be to put more things online, the transactional stuff online. We are making some progress in that area and we are starting to see an increase in the sorts of things that people can do on transactions. That will free up more time in the day to help support customers who need more time spent with them. That is our intention. We do have ups and downs in terms of our busy periods and it can be for different reasons. You know, now we are doing more transactional work, for example, liquor licensing, that was very busy in October and tax we talked about earlier on in the year, about May and so on, so there are more seasonal things. If we find there is the need to change our opening hours we would do so and perhaps a good example of doing that, that is the intention for the library. We are going to run a pilot in the library to extend the opening hours for that particular community asset so we can use that better for the Island. We are able to run that as a pilot over the next 12 months, from January, that is our intention there. It does generally quieten off in the last part of the day and it is quite busy first thing in the morning.

The Minister for Social Security:

There was not a long wait. I was just saying it was still nice and buzzy on a Friday afternoon at that time, but it was still buzzing and it was a 5 minute wait to see income support. There was no wait at passports, you know. There was enough people to test the it was a nice buzzy atmosphere and then we went across the road to Back to Work and the other things, so that was good.

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

Through the ticketing system we do have quite a lot of information about the customer volumes, customer activity and the like so we have that analysis which would show if we are seeing a change in footfall patterns, because obviously we want to resource accordingly to help customers get in and out as fast as they can.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

Talking about the ticketing process, do your stats show if a customer picks a ticket up at the door do they show all of the areas that they visit?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

Yes. We have a process that we just move the ticket around and so we can that is how we can tell that 16 per cent of customers have been doing more than one thing. They could have walked out and come back in again 5 minutes later and then gone somewhere else, we would not know that but where someone is on one ticket, yes, they do move around. We hope, obviously, to reduce the number of times they have to move around. We hope the teams can do more things for the customer. Our phase 1 restructure was to change our structure within the department to be segmented around the customer so rather than have a team looking after income support, a team looking after health benefits, we are now working towards a team that looks after issues for people who are working age or with families and therefore, hopefully, as the training is developed, a member of the public will only have to see one member of staff rather than 2 in that example. So that is the intention and the same for pensions and care and the same for business.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

So through the Target Operating Model have you lost any resources?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

Yes. We are delivering between 2 phases, a £700,000 saving. There are about, I think, 12 F.T.E. (full-time equivalent) that were put at risk of redundancy.

[14:15]

When we started the consultation we expected to lose about 12 F.T.E. across both bits. Some of that was going to be through not replacement of roles, some of that would be through making people redundant, and I think I mentioned last time in phase 1, the larger part of it, we only had 2 people who ended up being put on notice of redundancy and they are currently working through redeployment and hopefully will get some posts in Government.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

Basically if you were to say what would be the difficulties, do you think, of the implementation or do you think you have covered everything in relation to the implementation of it?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

As always it is balancing the demand, delivering a great service today and also effectively training at the same time and balancing the 2 is some of the challenge. Bringing the teams along, getting them to be bought into the idea has been part of our communication activity from when we launched the concept of the department through to consultation and so on. That has all been part of that buy- in process. It is not easy for people because that is also a long period of uncertainty but I think we have done everything we can to try and limit the uncertainty after consultation has finished by getting the recruitment completed quickly so that we are back on to focusing on serving the customer. We are always looking for examples of where things have gone well, sharing successes and also at the same time looking out for ideas from people, from the teams, about how we can make things better. We have an ongoing process of induction, ongoing process of training people and communication that means everyone should be informed about what is happening and therefore can support the idea. It is great also that the public regularly give us positive feedback about the experiences and that is a really helpful it is brilliant and it is really helpful to give that reassurance to staff that what we are doing is having a positive effect and they should be proud of that.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

Thank you. We are going to move now on to the draft departmental operational business plans. In the draft business plan, it states that most services will become digital by default. What is the timeline for this work?

The Minister for Social Security:

Is this the Customer and Local Services Business Plan draft? Well, Scott might know as well because it is digital but this is again I only have 3 things in here that are Social Security.

It is an ongoing stream anyway of trying to get things online, so that has been going on for many, many years and before so we are trying to get services so you can go online and you can request things. Within the Government Plan we have as it is a 6-year rolling programme of trying to improve things through a digital matter and it started very much with our security service but it is going to be moving into areas like our customer relationship management tools and our finance and charge systems in that way. It is going to be over a rolling platform to get these things but it is a piece of work that has been going on time and time again. It started about 3, 4 years ago, Ian?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

Yes, there is quite a list of things you can now do online. Some of them are downloading forms but some of them are completing forms end to end. The obvious example to remember is the attestation certificates, you can now do that quite frankly even when you are in France you can get one if you forget. It is things like which are everything is in progress. We are determined to put more of those transactional things online because, after all, customers will much prefer to do the simple things like that rather than have to come in physically into town to do that. As Deputy Wickenden says, there is, in the Government Plan, significant investments in I.T. (information technology). In 2021 and 2022 there is, I think, £1 million each year for service digitalisation which is particularly relevant to the question. That is money there to help accelerate the movement of services online. In the meantime, we have a team who support the website in modernisation of digital and they are moving things as best they can online using the existing systems we have got.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

Can I just ask, the data sharing agreements that you have in place is that sufficient for what you are trying to do with putting everything digital?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

Yes, following G.D.P.R.'s (General Data Protection Regulation) introduction in May 2018 we have put quite a bit of investment in understanding, knowledge and training into the new legislation and making sure that we have appropriate data protection impact assessments in data sharing agreements. That has caused quite a bit of extra work on that but in a good way because it means we are considering all angles in terms of people's data and so on. When we are developing and moving something online or trying to take some new services and have them part of One Front Door, for example, we go through and look at the data impact assessment and arrange appropriate data sharing agreements in the right way.

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

We also make sure and assess that people who have data only have the data they need to do the function and the service they are providing. So it is not like a blanket information to any department, they need to be able to understand which information they need to provide the service and no more. It is monitored and managed in that way.

The Deputy of St. John :

It is interesting, you mention £1 million

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

I mentioned, yes, £1 million in to 2021 and 2022, I think, for service digitalisation from memory.

The Deputy of St. John :

Is that just for the C.L.S. Department or is that overall?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

No, that is one small part of the overall investment planned for the technology.

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

It is across Government so it is about when we are looking at doing things in order from memory. It acts across Government in the ways that we can do it and that will link into the other overall big I.T. projects that we are doing too.

The Deputy of St. John :

Given that is a finite amount of money, how much is C.L.S. going to get dedicated to its I.T. needs?

The Minister for Social Security:

I think Trevor is asking, this £1 million is it for all the digital

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

There are lots of different programmes that fit into how this works. The £1 million - I do not have it in front of me - will be to do the work about identifying which areas should be on line so that we are covering that resource. But as things happen there is more money to be able to pay for things to happen as well. There are lots of different little programmes within the Government Plan that deal with lots of different areas of how we are going to be doing services in a different way.

The Deputy of St. John :

That is a bit concerning because the money is said to be there but it seems to be almost invisible and there is no apportionment as yet to C.L.S., Health, Home Affairs, X, Y and Z.

The Minister for Social Security:

I am not a great techno person but digital that is what we going forward we would not design individual systems like that that cannot talk to each other across the board. We are so bad at what we are using they need to talk to each other.

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

To do that work we would need to spend the money to do the work. So we have done an outline business case that has been assessed by E.Y. (Ernst and Young) with their experience in the market but then it was put in the Government Plan as an outline business case with an amount of money based on expert advice. Then once we have had the Government Plan approved and we get the money in January 2020 that piece of work about where it will go and how it works will happen. But to try and determine who gets what right now, we need the money to be able to even start that work.

The Deputy of St. John :

That is rather the cart before the horse, is it not?

Assistant Minister for Social Security: You need the money before you can spend it.

The Minister for Social Security:

You need the money, you need the work done and then you

The Deputy of St. John :

But on what basis are we going to approve this money in the Government Plan?

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

You will be approving it in the Government Plan, yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

But on what basis. We cannot see this.

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

The Government Plan has got an outlined business case that we are setting up things in mental health, education, technology and the like that says we want to do this because it is the right thing to do and will make us a better place. That is starting point.

The Deputy of St. John :

As a digital project you must surely have some idea of what the overall cost is going to be?

Assistant Minister for Social Security: Well, that is in the Government Plan.

The Minister for Social Security:

You have to design the cost before you design the project. You design a project, the best that is out there and then that is the next stage.

The Deputy of St. John :

I am just concerned because I do know a health facility in Cambridgeshire whose C.E.O. (Chief Executive Officer) had to resign because he was instrumental in spending so much money on I.T. That almost broke the bank. I think it was well over 300 million and people were not pleased.

Assistant Minister for Social Security: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

If we do not know what money is available upfront, how do we vote to establish its release?

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

The Government Plan is allocating money to be available. So it is all written out of our income and expenditure within the Government Plan. That is the break down that we have broken down to say this is how we are going to allocate the money that will be agreed.

The Deputy of St. John :

So you have allocated money to C.L.S., for example?

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

We have allocated money to look into the programme.

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

I think, for example, there is a bid for a one of the elements of the technology programme is for a C.R.M. (Customer Relationship Management) system. That is a C.R.M. system that would not be used by one department, it would be used by many and, therefore, to take your how much has been allocated for C.R.M. for C.L.S. that allocation has not been made in that way, it has been made on the basis of Government needs strategically a C.R.M. to help support customer activity, improve communication and customer service and therefore that is what we need. Not specifically that 20 per cent of it will be on C.L.S., 20 per cent will on Health and so on. I am not sure whether that is helpful or not but there is an amount in there for how much that will cost, estimate to run that system, but it has not been allocated by department in that way. I think that is right. If we want to break away from perhaps an historic approach and focus on the customer, you do want to do things in that way, otherwise you end up with 8 different - as we have at the moment - departments all having 8 different sets of Microsoft C.R.M. licences. I am not sure there is 8 but I know it is multiple. You might know how many there is but it is multiple departments all paying off the licences and not having a joined up approach to even one simple system.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

We understand that C.L.S. is due to lead the development and implementation of the first ever OneGov customer strategy, when is this due to take place?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

We have been working on that this year and we have been running a variety of focus groups, for example, with the public around customer services generally and we are looking for that to come into effect in the first quarter of next year. We have done some things slightly out of order, if I am honest. For example, we have just introduced a OneGov customer feedback policy and the customer feedback policy would have been part of the customer strategy as a key deliverable but it was felt that the way that the Government as a whole was perhaps dealing with customer feedback or complaints needed to be addressed faster than that. We brought that forward and that went live from 1st October, a single customer feedback policy for Government. Hopefully that will, over time, improve and give the public greater confidence that when they do have an issue that it can get addressed consistently across Government and hopefully addressed very quickly.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

Who will be responsible for its delivery then?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

That is something that I am responsible for. My group director for customer services is leading that work and is engaging with colleagues across the States. As well, as I say, we have been running focus groups and that should be delivered in the first quarter of 2020.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

You are the Director General in relation to C.L.S., so who is the Minister responsible for you?

Director General, Customer and Local Services.

It depends on the subject matter because if it is, for example, the library, then the library falls under the Minister for Education. If it is the Office of the Superintendent Registrar, it is under the Minister of Home Affairs, if it is people hub payroll it is under the Chief Minister's delegation. That is very different to what we are used to working as. In reality the Minister who I work most closely with, and that is why I am here today, is the Minister for Social Security. Financially we have significant amounts of benefits we pay out and customer activity, so that is the prime one.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

Dare I be so bold, is that C.L.S. should probably come under one Minister as in because it is about the delivery of service not about

The Minister for Social Security:

The delivery of service, Mary, is operational and it does not need a Minister

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

No, but the thing is to make somebody accountable, as in a senior officer working for the States, there has to be some lead.

[14:30]

It is very difficult for someone like the Director General if something goes wrong, who takes the accountability. The only reason I say this is because, as Deputy Alves said, in relation to the complaint process, somebody has to be responsible for the complaint process. That complaint can go across the board I suppose, so effectively what you are saying is then if the complaint is to do with Planning it goes to Planning. But if somebody has a complaint to do with a number of different areas of business, from my perspective and maybe from the public listening to this, surely it would be better to do have some department responsible for the complaint process so that effectively, if I complain, I know who is ultimately responsible, because, to tell me you have 6 different Ministers responsible is unhelpful.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

So I can give you some reassurance there. You are absolutely right, if there was a complaint about a planning issue or how someone was treated in the hospital, then the public would probably complain at that point, but if that was the case then I would hope that the people who receive the complaint in those areas resolves that complaint straight away. But what is different is that having a single policy means that the public have expectations about how they will be treated, but also in the phase 1 of my Target Operating Model there were some new roles created with a much wider responsibility than just C.L.S. So, for example, we now have a Customer Feedback Manager for Government and they will be analysing all that customer feedback, looking for trends, trying to get it so we can learn from what is happening in one place and improve it in the other. Also where we sometimes receive complaints that cross multiple areas that they are dealt with appropriately across multiple areas and that feedback is then given to, not only the senior leadership team of the Government, Charlie's top team, but also reported to the Council of Ministers on a regular basis. So there is also particular oversight from that respect. The Chief Minister is being quite vocal in terms of his concerns around complaint handling and that is one of the reasons why we have accelerated the implementation of a single customer feedback policy.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

As you are aware, I am fully aware of it from a previous life. Thank you.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

One of the ways in which C.L.S. is due to achieve its efficiency savings is through vacancy management, which you have touched on already, but can you advise what is meant by this?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

So, broadly, vacancy management is where you use vacancies to effectively facilitate headcount reduction or savings in ongoing spending. You can do that in a number of ways, you can look to see whether a role needs to be replaced, so it is not as formal as a consultation and redundancy, it is a better way in many respects of managing future demand and managing the amount of resources and people you need. So let me give you a simple example, somebody perhaps resigns or gets promotion or moves somewhere else within Government, you then have a vacancy, then you have to look at whether or not you want to replace that individual. You may want to look at the work they have been doing; can it be done a different way, can it be absorbed by other people? Is it needed, can it be stopped, or do you need to replace that person? That is the sort of mindset across Government that we need to consider whether or not we need to replace somebody because, after all, things change, technologies come in, systems improve, better ways of working, training to help productivity and the like, and it may well be that you do not need to replace that individual. That is what vacancy management broadly is about. It might be that you bring somebody in on a short- term basis while you look at that work a bit further. It might be that you can offer that role for secondment and there is another role somewhere else that you can potentially replace. So that is how you do it and it is by managing vacancies, managing the turnover in Government, that you can perhaps create savings without going through the more structured organisational development change process and the consultation process and putting lots of people at risk. The example I used before was that, if I have 40 people all with the same job description and over the year I need to perhaps move that team from 40 people to 38, I can either put everybody at risk, put them through selection and all that worry and concern, to remove 2 people or I can probably take the view that, over the next 12 months, 2 of those people are going to be moving around the organisation and, when they move, I will not replace them. That is a better way of managing that headcount.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

Are you able to give an indication of how many of those vacant posts will be removed? Because the scenarios that you have mentioned there, it is not necessarily completely predictable.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

If you look at first phase of the Target Operating Model, I think there are about 9 F.T.E. that we were going to reduce. Some of that has been through the consultation process and selection process; there are 2 people there on redeployment. Some of the others, people in the process have moved to other jobs, where they might have been made redundant have got a job elsewhere and so I have not replaced those posts. Then there are a number, from memory 4 or 5, that were going to be done through churn throughout the rest of the year and that is exactly what we have been able to do, through the natural movement of the department. The Government tends to have about 10 per cent turnover broadly overall and the efficiency down for vacancy management in the efficiency plan is equivalent to something like 1 per cent rather than 10 per cent.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

So it is 9 F.T.E. basically is what you are looking at the equivalent?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

From phase 1, yes, but some of that is from formal redundancies and some of that has been through people resigning as part of the process.

The Minister for Social Security:

That has already been achieved in phase 1, that was done.

Deputy C.S. Alves : Going forward?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

So phase 2, there are 3 F.T.E. there but that probably will again be through a mixture of potentially compulsory redundancies and also churn as people are in the process of moving around or making decisions. So that will deliver our 2020 Target Operating Model savings of £700,000. They are net savings; we also have extra savings on top of that to create new posts like the Customer Feedback Manager, like the welcome hosts and the like, so I am giving you the net figures.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

The achievement of many of your objectives rely on successful collaboration with colleagues across Government. How do you intend to improve collaboration?

The Minister for Social Security:

We do work together a lot better, depending on which Minister, at the moment what is on the table, the Jersey Care Model, is working with Richard very closely and his officers. Last week I met Richard 2 or 3 times on my own, it was great because we sit in the same office and talk, and met with him and my officers and his officers. As you say, I can feel your frustration of what is up here but we have to work together because Richard wants to get this care model through and at the moment he wants to spend some of the H.I.F. (Health Insurance Fund) money, which we do not have a problem with, they are going to do it in the next few months, some real detailed work, the whole care model, and the buy-in from G.P.s (general practitioners), the buy-in is fantastic. There are young G.P.s on the Island, lots of them have already grouped together. We were watching your Scrutiny hearing with Richard yesterday. One of the officers there, he was a male, but he has been at least once, if not twice, to every G.P.'s surgery on this Island and heard the frustrations. I know his name but I did not want to say it. For me, being in this job for probably too long some people would think, to just get to this point now where there is money, we have a C.S.P. (Common Strategic Policy) for what we are going to do. It is in Richard's, but to develop a model of support for access to primary care for the financially vulnerable; that is in our plan and that will be done in 2020. At the same time, getting this model, we have the bigger G.P.s out there now and they want to do it. Caroline was saying yesterday: "Why do you need to see a doctor when you need regular blood tests?" My elderly parents have 4 a year, they went to a clinic, doctor-based. Everything would be checked, but if they needed anything, if anything was wrong, they would get a phone call within a few days: "You now will see a doctor." But, other than that, it was all good news, did not need to see the doctor. Obviously it is a cheaper thing, but they knew the nurse. When my mum broke her hip, they started to try to get her to walk, I said: "Why are trying to get her to walk? She could not walk before she broke her hip so she has got no chance now." But her G.P. would have known that. So working fantastically with Richard, we work with fantastic Scott , the Assistant Chief Minister, digital can go over here on me but he tells me what is going on. Then I have Jeremy who is across with Tracey, the skills, the work, health, it just, to me, I really feel it is working. The next thing we have to do is, as Government, we have to get the Government Plan approved. There is a lot of money in that. There is money in that for my second part of what I call my "family-friendly". Because I said to businesses, and that is why I think it went through in the end, I want to be fair and I want to extend the benefit but I do not want any small business out there who is employing men to be worse off than the small business employing women. So get that across the line, get it in and everything. It has all changed to me, I have been there 20 years and never seen a Government Plan and there is lots in there but I just find it is very exciting. So we are working, honestly, Deputy Le Hegarat , we are really working across sorry, Deputy Alves .

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

We work very well together and we have lots of meetings that cross lots of different boundaries and it is not just Ministers, it is Assistant Ministers as well.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Can I just interject, as we are talking about collaboration and meetings, I am going to refer back to Hansard on 29th January when the Minister for Health and Social Services, in response to a question when Deputy Southern was responding about the Ethical Care Charter, and I only mention it because you have talked about sitting in the same office with the Minister for Health and Social Services and collaborating and I am going to quote the Minister for Health and Social Services here when he says: "I cannot give a firm date about the involvement of reaching the agreement on the Ethical Care Charter. My next step will be to speak to the Minister for Social Security and her officers possibly, or through Assistant Ministers, because the Charter envisions that the employment terms of home-care workers will be enhanced. That of course affects employment law." That was on 29th January. Can you confirm if those conversations have happened since then with the Minister for Health and Social Services?

The Minister for Social Security: About the employment law?

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

About the Ethical Care Charter that he is saying that he was going to speak to you about.

The Minister for Social Security: I could not, no.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

Can I? So the reason for the reference to the Assistant Minister in that quote is because the Assistant Minister would be Deputy Southern and so it was the person who made the proposition for the Care Charter in the first place. I do know that Deputy Southern has spoken to Deputy Renouf in the last 2 weeks on that matter and it is being progressed through that route. So there have been officer negotiations between the 2 departments during the year that have not involved the Ministers.

The Minister for Social Security:

Yes, so he was the Assistant Minister, but he is still talking as, obviously, the Minister will talk to anybody.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

So the Minister for Health and Social Services is holding that project at the minute, there has been progress, it has been through the Minister for Health and Social Services.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

So there has been progress on the Ethical Care Charter but not in the way he is saying, because I am just quoting what he is saying to the Assembly: "My next step will be to speak to the Minister for Social Security and her officers." What you are saying is you have not specifically had a meeting with the Minister for Health and Social Services about the Ethical Care Charter and the change he is talking about but, as Sue has just said, there have been some conversations.

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

I am sure the Minister for Health and Social Services, when it gets to the point where he wants to speak to the Minister for Social Security he might not be at that point of where he is ready to talk in that manner.

The Minister for Social Security:

Yes, if there is something that needs to be changed in the employment law.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

With the greatest respect, this was a quote in January of this year and we are now November and I am obviously asking the same question of the Minister for Health and Social Services so it helps my research from the answers given, so thank you for that.

The Deputy of St. John :

I have some questions about the service improvements that you were planning in the Business Plan.

The Minister for Social Security: In the department business plan?

The Deputy of St. John :

Yes. On page 100 of that plan it states a list of key projects and service improvements for 2020 and 2023. Could you let us know what progress is being made with these projects and which of those projects you have overall responsibility for? Would it be helpful if I read them out for the public?

[14:45]

The Minister for Social Security:

No, I can see them. I am just going through them, and again is it political or is it departmental, so I will have to go through them. Bullet-point 1: "Implement changes to the social security scheme to provide benefits to both parents," is ongoing. I got that through and it will come back to the Assembly, once we get the money, in that we want to start it in July.

The Deputy of St. John : Important factor.

The Minister for Social Security:

It will come back to the Assembly, it has to, early next year if we get the money in the business plan. I sort of have now a strand, and it is not because I am Minister for Social Security, but it works well for the Disability Strategy and we have some money in the Government Plan, not in the departmental business plan, but I have money in the Government Plan and there will be 2 officers.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

It is 2 staff based at C.L.S. from next year funded through the Disability Strategy as with money for projects, which will also be run through C.L.S. mainly.

The Minister for Social Security:

The third one is more close to home and is being delivered but it is not necessarily me; it is Sean McGonigle. "Provide, improve support." Again that is in our Government Plan; that would be me. "Improve support and protection for tenants." Sam Mézec . "Produce and execute a strategy for replacement of C.L.S. legacy technology." I think we did that one, did we not?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

That specifically is in relation to the replacement or renewal of the benefits I.T. system. That is part of the investment in the Technology Plan.

The Minister for Social Security:

"Support the development and delivery of the Jersey Care Model." Again I am really excited about it but they will need to use the money from the Health Insurance Fund to double-run things and to get it kick-started, so that is my involvement in that and I need to make sure that their economists and whoever they are bringing down that our money is spent well.

The Deputy of St. John :

So the plan to use the Health Insurance Scheme is the contingency, if you like, funds that will set up the system and presumably, as the system progresses, funds will be able to be transferred from the Health budget.

The Minister for Social Security:

If it is for Health things, if there is anything else it has to come to the Assembly and we have told Health this very clearly and so it will be an Assembly decision. But we do have a little bit of money in there at the moment that can only be spent once and it would be to spend it on this and making things affordable, getting it right, we can only get that wrong once. So you have asked me to go through this list and absolutely that is fine, Trevor, but, no, Sue has chapter and verse on what the H.I.F. can be used for. If it is for literally providing health care that is not a problem. But anything else that we may need in this model, the Assembly will be the final arbiter, which is absolutely right because it set the fund up.

The Deputy of St. John :

Of the list of things I have here, there are 7 things on the list I have

The Minister for Social Security: I have got a whole page, sorry.

The Deputy of St. John :

but of this list it does not seem as if you have the direct responsibility but you might have a responsibility for providing funds for other departments to achieve their aims.

The Minister for Social Security:

If you have only 7, do you want to read your 7 and then I can see what my understanding is?

The Deputy of St. John :

"Implement changes to the Social Security Scheme to provide benefits to both parents."

The Minister for Social Security: That is definitely me, yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

"Work with businesses, parishes and community groups to improve social inclusion by delivering the Disability Strategy and supporting diversity."

The Minister for Social Security:

Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

"Deliver community-based services and activities in partnership with the voluntary sector and parishes. Provide improved support for disabled adults living at home and their informal carers. Improve support and protection for tenants by establishing a housing advisory service.

The Minister for Social Security:

That is under the C.S.P.; that is Senator Mézec .

The Deputy of St. John :

"Produce and execute a strategy for the replacement of C.L.S. legacy technology platforms to enable the long-term achievement of our customer service transformation objectives." I suppose that is the strategy. "Support the development and delivery of the Jersey Care Model." Again you will support it but it is not your responsibility as such.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

If it is helpful. If you take the first one, clearly this has been written to say that C.L.S. will implement the changes that have been agreed by the States to the Social Security Scheme to provide benefits to both parents. The policy and the legislative work is provided now in the new OneGov structure by colleagues in SP3. Sue is here, for example, for that reason, as Policy Director, to oversee the policy development. But once the policy is created, delivered and voted on and hopefully agreed by the States, operationally we still need to update our systems to be able to pay the benefit out, educate the public, provide that service and pay out the money. That is operationally what C.L.S. would do. So whereas before perhaps it was more obvious that, as the Social Security Department, you had a policy person working in the department along with a finance person, operational people, and it would all be underneath the Minister, now that we have a different structure it means that the policy elements of the Minister for Social Security's activity is in the SP3 Business Plan; their departmental business plan.

The Deputy of St. John :

The reason we are asking the question is that we are very unclear about the way it works. I hate to think what the public feel about the way it works. If we are unclear, they definitely do not have much clarity, I do not think. Is there a way that we can improve the information flow to the public in relation to the structure and the way it works?

The Minister for Social Security:

What is it the public want to know? I am saying the public go down the road now and instead of going to 5 different places to get 3 different things that is what the public need to know. Then there is policy, strategic and operational. You asked me to go through that list, Trevor, and I think most of them are partly me, someone is doing it, and they have already been agreed. So when they come back we have agreed to do a lot of those things on the list and what we have not agreed is to be agreed in the Government Plan. If you have any suggestions from what the public are asking you questions about, then we can get this message better out there. Obviously we will take it on board because it is about the customer; that is what we want to focus on, the customer.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

So, in effect, the Minister's Business Plan is the Government Plan.

The Minister for Social Security:

Yes, this is how it will operate, the business operations, department operations.

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

Until it is approved you might confuse people by saying: "We are going to be doing this" too early because it has to be approved first.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

As you go through the Government Plan, on these sorts of pages you have clearly the departments involved and the Minister involved. So, for example

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

Can I suggest page 72 of the Government Plan, it is a good example, I will give it to you to have a look at and you can see you have the action in the Government Plan and then you have a Minister's responsibility and you have the departments that will be doing the work. On that page you can see the Minister is responsible for most of those items but they are going to be delivered through a range of different departments. So the point is that where before we used to have a system that was very rigid, Minister and department, Minister and department, Minister and department

The Minister for Social Security:

Which all went up and down and nothing across.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

now there is a range of Ministers and a range of departments and there have been lots of good explanation of how One Front Door works and how C.L.S. works providing a much, much better service to customers. So you are talking about how do the public know what is going on, the point is the public has one point of access to an awful lot of Government services that is much improved support for

Deputy C.S. Alves :

What was meant was how do the public know who is the Minister who is responsible if you like.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

Who is accountable? Who is accountable?

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department: That is

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

Obviously from a scrutiny perspective we want to ask the questions to Ministers ensuring their accountability, but it seems to be that it does not appear to be clear to everybody as to what their responsibilities are necessarily and that is maybe what we were asking the questions but it is not as clear as we would like it to be in relation to certain elements of the Target Operating Model. That is the thing, is it not, it is about clear, defined responsibilities of Ministers so that if somebody has to account for something that is done well or goes wrong or whatever that you can say: "That is the Minister for this." It is about accountability.

The Deputy of St. John :

That is not to say that we have not had some very good briefings on subjects like family-friendly, we have, but it is the overall thing that is not clear. Can I go back to the Jersey Care Model, you mentioned the Health Insurance Fund, are there any other ways in which you are going to be supporting the development of that delivery service?

The Minister for Social Security:

We have to look at everything, the way we pay G.P.s at the moment; that part-payment. My officers are not health delivery people and that is Health. They will decide how it is delivered and what is needed. We will have to look at everything else that we do that at the moment is providing the money with G.P.s and the H.I.F. is very small on the co-payment and it does have to be a doctor. So it does not incentivise them to get a nurse because they still have to charge to get that £20.20 back. So we have a "you would not start here" system, we have young G.P.s that really want to do a lot more and they want to bring those practice nurses in and specialisms. They are training, the same as consultants do, you do not get a general surgeon now because they do specialism from ankles to feet and elbows.

We work together in a way that is, in Health, are we spending our money to get the right outcomes and this is the right way of doing it, so there is obviously, as part of the Jersey Care Model, where you say: "Maybe that is not the right way and model for the outcomes we are after." That discussion is ongoing with this.

The Deputy of St. John :

G.P.s especially, you are well aware of the fact that there is an upfront charge that is a disincentive for people going to their G.P.s.

The Minister for Social Security:

Some people, it would be for some people. Yes, as I said to you, on page 47 of the Government Plan: "Deliver new models of primary care including [and the last one is] the development of a model to support access to primary care for financially-vulnerable individuals." So that is going to be delivered in 2020. I cannot identify yet how we deliver it but it is coming on, the full care model was not particularly signed off as much when the Government Plan was ready to go, and Caroline had not been in post for that long, it was just a bit of a timing issue. But it is there and, again, we want to deliver more, we want the doctors to deliver things differently, and the outcomes.

Assistant Minister for Social Security:

Working with people; it has to be collaborative; it has to be evidence-based and it should not be just to speak

The Minister for Social Security:

They seem to be, which is really great news, the G.P.s are there wanting they have to do things completely different and they need different supports as well. They need to know there is a consultant they can talk to if they have a sick child at 5.00 p.m. at night or 10.00 p.m. at night and they need to get that backup and it is not there yet.

The Deputy of St. John :

That is a big project, we appreciate that, and we have had discussions with Health. It is not an easy project to achieve.

The Minister for Social Security:

No, it is not, and we have one chance to get this right and everyone is willing at the moment. The next 2 or 3 months, when they bring these high-powered economists in, they are going to drill down to every penny and where it is delivered and who is delivering it and who can afford it, we will have the answer. But the willingness out there is absolutely for this model.

[15:00]

The Deputy of St. John :

One of the key projects stated for 2020 is to roll out services at locations across the Island in partnership with the voluntary and community sectors and the parishes applying the Closer to Home initiative. What services are you referring to here?

The Minister for Social Security:

We do send out some people for income support now and when Sean asks something, it is whatever the people want, so they will survey one week, and I can only talk because it is a Communicare, people do not want to come into town, if they want one of our advisers to go out, people will know who is there on a certain time in a certain area.

Director General, Customer and Local Services: It is a fixed timetable for Communicare.

The Minister for Social Security:

No, no, that is all right, you have seen it before. Yes.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

At the moment the key closer-to-home hub is at Communicare and it is accepted that Communicare is fairly unique as a community facility. What we can do elsewhere on the Island will not be like Communicare. We have to accept that but it does not mean to say that we cannot do things across the Island. For example, what it is really about is using community facilities more effectively to deliver services to people who maybe will not be able to reach them elsewhere and effectively those services will become preventative and therefore also help improve quality of life in the long run and also therefore affect the demand on Government services going forward. At the moment, for example, there are fit-for-life activities taking place in St. Ouen , St. John and St. Clement and I think St. Martin from the new year, which are referrals for the elderly population from G.P.s to go on fit- for-life classes and those are now being held at closer venues for people, hopefully improving take- up and accessibility in that way. There is a lot of work taking place with the voluntary and community sector, the charitable sector, around clusters, getting clusters of charities together to understand particularly around specific issues so they can think about how best to deliver those services in a different way. Jersey Sport, for example, they are not quite a charity, but they are looking to do more of their movement activity work. They are doing something at Trinity at the moment. These things are happening but they are not happening in the same way as Communicare, which is one place and it all happens in the same place, it will be more spread around. We will continue to

develop that service with V.C.S. (voluntary and community sector) and expand the reach and it is also a little bit about piloting to see how we can reach the right people who would not have otherwise utilised that service. It is very much a programme that will develop in the right way across the Island. It is important also to realise it is not just about fitness things, it is also about advice, so if you look at what is happening at Communicare you have the Jersey Library there, you have Age Concern doing perhaps more social inclusion work, and you also have Call and Check providing advice about their services and the Citizens Advice Bureau as well as the parish. That is a good example and those things will happen but not in the same way as they will be more appropriate for the facilities across the Island. It is the sort of thing that is another one of those things that it might even be worth us having a briefing to you, to the panel, around how that is developing perhaps in the new year.

The Deputy of St. John :

Who is taking the lead in co-ordinating these community activities?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

I have a Director of Local Services, Sean McGonigle, and he is very much pursuing and moving that along. We are working with the voluntary and community sector. We have held a number of workshops with the groups and there is an acceptance that progress is being made. But it is not as simple as saying: "We are going to go from there to there," because you need to bring everybody along, you need to pilot things, try things out, take some risks in terms of having services that could be oversubscribed, services that may not work as well because no one turns up, but you have to take some risks in terms of trying to reach out and make things happen in a very different way. As I say, perhaps it is worthy of a separate briefing to the panel in the new year.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

It is good. I will just mop up some things here. Just following on what you just said about Sean's work and stuff, I was at those workshops and obviously had a great relationship with most of the voluntary sector. It was clear from the evidence that we gathered during our Government Plan review and what we put into it that there is still, as you just acknowledged, work to be done. The only way that this could work is the communication lines between the third sector is improved. There is a bit of concern in the charitable sector, it has been a very rocky year for them because of the changes made with the Charities Law, the Charities Commission, the introduction of Care Regulations, et cetera, and obviously they are heavily a fundamental part of the new future care model as well. So there is a lot of concern growing. One of the projects for 2020 in the Government Plan is to secure stronger partnership working and the greater co-ordination of activities and resources with voluntary and community sector organisations. Can you just give us an insight, and I know Sean is not here, but what more can you tell us that, from learning from this year, what will be done differently and what more resources could be found within this Government Plan to beef it up?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

There is a bid I think we have already covered, we have already mentioned it, there is a bid for work around the Disability Strategy, which, if it is approved by the States, it brings in some extra resources. We will be working with Sean because it is very complementary to the work he is already doing and that will help accelerate the facilitation of the improvements to Closer to Home that we would want to see. It is a lot of stakeholder management, a lot of stakeholder relationship management, and you will know very well that there is the makeup of the charitable sector, there is a lot of overlap, there are lots of gaps, and that has to be worked through to bring everybody along. But there is also a lot of goodwill and a tremendous amount of good that happens. There is a lot of goodwill with the work that Sean is doing and just recently, and I know it is simple, the concept of a shared minibus scheme pulling in the support of LibertyBus, pulling in the idea that people do not have to have their own buses and do not have to pay out the insurance, do not have to pay for the servicing, but can still get access to facilities like that that will be kept up-to-date by LibertyBus. That is the sort of thing that is a simple thing but for many charities the ownership of a bus, the money- raising for something, what you do with it, how you keep it up-to-date, whether it is safe, is a major concern and that

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

I am glad you raised that because I worked at Headway Jersey, so we had to have 2 specific minibuses picking up people with very complex complicated needs that only that minibus can pick them up. So what LibertyBus are offering is a universal pickup scheme, which is great if it is just pickup and drop and ride, but what I am concerned is that if Headway, as a specific example, or the Cheshire Homes who have specific vehicles, that they combine with their service and say: "We can provide it." It is just making sure that it is working both ways. It is great that Liberty pick up and drop, but there are specific vehicles that can only meet the specific needs of a long-term disability, so has that been included in that? So we need to bring that in.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

Yes. I do not know specifically if Sean has had that conversation but that is a great example of where there are things that can happen. Perhaps what we need to do is help facilitate those discussions to take place and that is the sort of work that Sean and his small team are doing at the moment.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

I will be keen to have that briefing so we can pick up on this sort of stuff so we can bring in a bit of insight. My next question was mopping up the Disability Strategy, your written letter to us on 10th October to some additional questioning we had for the Government Plan, we asked about the Disability Strategy, and part of your answer in the final 2 paragraphs, it mentioned a major project in 2020 recruiting a group of disabled volunteers to be trained to provide advice on accessibility of buildings. My first question is an update on that and a bit of background. But then it goes on to say: "The identification of additional projects currently under discussion. A draft list will be discussed at the Disability Strategy Delivery Group in its October meeting including a final list of projects, which will be confirmed after this meeting." Do you have a bit of feedback of what that list is and has it been confirmed yet?

The Minister for Social Security: That was October.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

So the meetings that have taken place, there have been 2 meetings, there was a

The Minister for Social Security:

Yes, I met in the evening, yes, with the other groups.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

Yes, an evening public meeting and a daytime meeting with the group.

The Minister for Social Security: Yes, Trevor was there in the evening.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

Yes, the Disability Strategy that was published in 2017 had a list of actions identified in it. Some of those have already happened, others have been put into other areas, so it is important that is reviewed. The Government Plan, subject to approval, will identify sufficient funding for 2 full-time staff, who will sit in Sean's team, which will really help not only for disability but also for community and the charitable sector, it will run across all of those things in one go. Then the access service is a 2020 service that has not started yet. It is in planning now but there will not be any progress until 2020 when the funding comes in for that one. The other projects, we need to just finish with that loop going around through the costing of them today, in today's money, because the costings move forward, they were quite historic, to go to what is going to happen in 2020. So that will happen, like I said, but we do not have any money until 2020, so we will be doing that over the next couple of months. Yes, absolutely, we will get to it as soon as that has been agreed with the Minister

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

So we could envision that final full list by the end of this year?

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

Absolutely. So the meeting was last week, certainly this month probably we will pass it to you.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Just continuing with a bit of mopping up, page 104 details the financial overview, table 4, it just shows basically the bulk of expenditure shifting from customer services to customer operations. I just wanted a bit of an explanation of the significance of this and what it means operationally, if you can put in a bit of detail to that?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

The customer operations basically includes all the benefits expenditure, which is obviously very significant, and that is the bulk of the costs. I am not quite sure, you are saying it is shifting from one to the

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

It is just the way the figures move, just if it was physically shifting or is it just the way the figures are set out?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

It is just the way the figures are presented, yes. So what is included in here basically are tax-funded benefits, the majority of which is income support, the staff costs of running the department, the non- staff costs of running the department, things like the grant to J.E.T. (Jersey Employment Tribunal), et cetera, as well, and also income, which we get from registration cards, because we run the Population Office, and also the social security funds pay an annual fee for the processing of their benefits, which we call a management charge.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

There are no changes there; nothing will be changed?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

No. The changes from 2019 to 2020 effectively are there is an adjustment for the efficiencies and also a reforecast of benefit expenditure.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Page 106 shows a reduction in expenditure in 2020 compared to 2019 for many of the services. Again, just an explanation of how you are making the savings in the following areas in 2020, so supplies and services, grants and subsidies payments and social benefit payments.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

Social benefit payments, which is the tax-funded benefits, most of which is income support, again that will be a reforecast from the earlier reforecast in the year. We forecast benefits expenditure every 3 months and between the 2019 expected expenditure and 2020 the number of income support claimants has continued to reduce and therefore the expected bill has gone down, even though the Minister has up-rated all components by 1.9 per cent and increased disregard as well. So that increase is factored in and indeed in future years you can see that there are further increases in that line, allowing for future up-rates. Obviously if the number of income support claimants perhaps goes down then those things will be reforecast going forward.

The Minister for Social Security:

Also to just add to that, I know this as well with my hat in H.A.W.A.G. (Housing and Work Advisory Group), the people who are in work as well but still may be getting income support are getting paid more per hour and then the minimum wage went up twice this year. So the top-up has got smaller, so these figures, it is what it is. The market out there is fighting for staff.

[15:15]

Most of them, they come to H.A.W.A.G. and at nowhere near minimum wage, it is between £12 and £14 an hour for your core skills, but they cannot find somebody who lives on the Island under 5 years. There is so much full employment out there, which is good news for us in the figures, but businesses are struggling. But we are holding at immigration as well, so I am on that board as well.

The Deputy of St. John :

I saw your interim report, 257 pages of interim report.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

So just identifying the savings, it is quite considerable, so I know you are saying the forecast is changing but is that

Director General, Customer and Local Services: So that is on the social benefit payments, yes.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

The rest of it, in terms of the savings you make?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

The rest of it, the efficiency savings are detailed on page 110 and basically that is £2.2 million. What I have talked about here in the past is the first line, which is the Target Operating Model savings and indeed a £300,000 review of non-staff costs. Then we have included in the next line £944,000 of benefit re-forecasting, so the forecast has gone down, so there is £944,000 there, and another £100,000 of contract savings, so procurement centrally, and this is more detailed in the Efficiencies Plan, but central procurement, our own contracts, like for example printing and other such things, which we use in departments and have allocated against our budgets, they will be renegotiating contracts there and they think they can make further savings, which means for C.L.S. another £100,000. Then the remaining £62,000 and £114,000 is a mixture from savings around staff costs to do with vacancy management that we talked about earlier on and also overtime and the like as well as £40,000 in there for further One Front Door type savings where we think there are some other services that we can bring in and save some further funds by making the service in one place and making it more efficient.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

The big one that we have all touched on is the vacancy management and the other issue that is seemingly talked about a lot is the long-term sickness that the Chief Executive mentioned about, which is obviously an issue, so what can you tell us about your department and the way you are looking at what the Chief Executive said about tackling long-term sickness and capacity and managing this? What is your view on it from someone who has run the department for a very long time? You must have seen this with a multitude of staff who have come and gone and worked for your department, you are dealing with some of the most vulnerable people in society, and take that on and with a mental health hat on, which I asked the Minister about earlier, is protecting staff. This is going to be a bit of an issue going forward and how you manage it and how it is perceived with working with vacancies and staffing cutback, it is a very delicate area.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

So we particularly take the importance of staff wellbeing, it is very important, we have a group of staff who work on wellbeing initiatives in the department. All staff members know that they can ask for time away from serving customers if they have a particular issue that has affected them or something personal that has affected them. People often jump on that point and assume it is a customer who has been angry or cross about something, but it could be just talking about someone who has had a bereavement, it can affect somebody quite dearly. Absolutely everyone knows they can step away from that. We do lots of things in there to support staff as well as do things proactively to improve wellbeing and health as well. But people do fall ill and there are good practice things that one should do, making sure that you speak to people when they are reporting ill, when they return, you do return-to-work interviews to make sure that they do all the right things and whether they should be back at work. So those are the sorts of best-practice things that we do. Sometimes of course somebody maybe has a bit of an issue with absence and needs further support and we have services through our occupational health contract as well as sometimes there is the other side of it, which is sometimes people, sadly, maybe there are issues in terms of disciplinary that may need to be addressed if people are ill

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Do you envision much of this going forward for the next year when all of this goes through, you are going to another piece of work with the staff in terms of vacancy management and also long-term illness?

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

We already do quite a bit in this area and I am pretty comfortable that we do things pretty well. We can always do things better but there is some reassurance about doing it consistently across Government and making sure that we are managing everybody and supporting people in the right way in particular. As a OneGov initiative there is definitely merit to being more consistent and getting that best practice. After all, we have got, unlike commercial businesses, we have a health service working for us and there is a lot of expertise there that could help support colleagues and managers dealing with people who are unwell.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

You do acknowledge there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of angst at the moment with any restructuring process and this has been going on quite a long time now; the longer it goes on the longer the risk it could impact somebody's mental health, they take longer off work, that impacts you and you have a staff problem. I am watching the minutes of the people waiting at your department; that has a huge impact. This is a challenge that has to be implemented, and how you do it to protect staff as well as managers.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

I was very keen that we got through our Target Operating Model changes quickly because, as I said before, staff at C.L.S. are supporting customers who are in a worse place than they are and therefore I wanted to eliminate as best I could the uncertainty for colleagues. That seemed the right thing to do. The feedback I have had is it was the right thing to do. That is what we have tried to do; to limit the uncertainty. Obviously we have been lucky in that we are of a size we can move quite quickly in that way. There are other areas that are much bigger where it will take longer unfortunately and I do hope that we can do what we can to support colleagues out the other side, as it were. So Back to Work, for example, will be providing outplacement support for some groups of colleagues who might end up on redeployment or at risk of redundancy. We will be doing everything we can there to support them in finding work and hopefully within Government but also potentially, if not in Government, then quickly outside.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Ending on a positive note from me, watching the real-time figures of waiting lists, an interesting revelation from the Health Department yesterday that the waiting line information was not accurate. Can you just confirm, just for reassurance sake, that this information is accurate? It is seemingly in real time.

Director General, Customer and Local Services: It is in real time.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

After yesterday's revelation we had to ask.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

The estimated waiting time is of course an estimate, so you cannot predict the future entirely, but it is based upon the experience that we have. So if you have somebody in front of you, and we have all experienced that I am sure in a shop or somewhere, there is one person in front of you but that person takes 40 minutes, then that will not be real for the person waiting 40 minutes if it says 11 minutes at the moment. But the idea is that is helpful to the public, we will be promoting that now that is live and robust. But also that is a useful vehicle to encourage people to do it online rather than come in where they can.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

I hate to play devil's advocate here but the biggest waiting list with an average time of 55 minutes is to see the Tax Department as I am watching here and obviously there have been some issues with tax. What has been the impact of that? Because obviously we are getting letters and calls from constituents all day long now about the impact of the system of tax, or whatever reason, you must see the people queuing. I am watching the numbers in front of me of how many people are queuing up.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

Firstly, the tax colleagues will be bringing people downstairs to help address that queue. Obviously implementing a new I.T. system of this magnitude with the historic nature of the previous system and the files, et cetera, is a major challenge and the fact that we have got to this point, there are some delays, but the Revenue Jersey team are doing a pretty good job in trying to manage both the implementation, the training that is needed, and also the business-as-usual. They would like to be further ahead with this year's tax returns I know and they have been doing everything

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

It is the impact of it though. What we are discovering is people have got their I.T.I.S. (Income Tax Instalment System) back quite late and they have found their last 2 payments of tax have rocketed up to cover the back-payment and obviously you can go in and chat and negotiate but that puts people in distress and obviously they want to come and talk to the department. I am just seeing an upsurge of this, so I raise it now because obviously I am watching the numbers, I am hearing the complaints, I am just passing it along what the fallback is for you.

Director General, Customer and Local Services:

The Comptroller of Taxes has said he would be sympathetic to a number of things in terms of this year's tax returns. The prize is though that from 1st January everybody will be able to file online and that will be a tremendous leap forward for everybody.

The Minister for Social Security:

If you wait until October, I file mine when it comes in and it goes straight back out again, I file mine in January.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

Let us nip out of tax, we are back into Social Security.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

So touching on G.P.'s fees, page 79 of the departmental operational business plans show the social benefit payments remaining fairly static over the next 4 years. How will the changes in primary care and the increased demand for G.P. appointments be reflected in income support payments, which currently include an estimation of the number of G.P. visits a recipient is judged to make?

The Minister for Social Security:

So income support payments, from memory it is 4 visits a year to the doctor, in individual components. Sorry, I do not have that page. I start at 90-something.

Deputy C.S. Alves : Page 79.

The Minister for Social Security:

Of which report?

Assistant Minister for Social Security: Departmental operational business plans.

The Minister for Social Security: This one starts at 93.

Deputy C.S. Alves :

It is a table that shows I will just show you.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

See SP4, 301: "Care needs at home, disability, social inclusion, Minister for Social Security."

The Minister for Social Security: I am just saying my

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat : Appendix 4, table 7.

Director General, Customer and Local Services: I think that has come from somewhere else.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

It is page 79 of the departmental operational business plans.

The Minister for Social Security:

It is somebody else's business plan because why we start at page 93 is because there are other business parts in it. The question was, sorry?

Deputy C.S. Alves :

The payments, the sum of money allocated, is said to remain fairly static over the next 4 years. If there is going to be more pressure put on to the G.P.s through the primary health care model, then how are you going to reflect that in the

The Minister for Social Security:

The model completely needs to change, this is what we were saying earlier, this is what happens. So we need to find a way with the G.P.s, who certainly are wanting to work with us, it will be outcomes and it will be contracts, it will not be the H.I.F., you cannot just keep doing a co-payment, what incentive is that? That is not how they want to work. Will we need to probably spend more money and subsidise more people? Absolutely, we will do. What that figure is and what that looks like and who it is, these are the people who are coming in and they are now going to tell me, they are going to drill down, they are going to look and they are going to see where the money is and how you can best deliver it, who can afford and why

Deputy C.S. Alves :

So that figure could change then, it may not remain static as what is being currently put down.

The Minister for Social Security: It is not my figure.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

It says on the thing it is Social Security.

Head of Policy and Strategy Policy Department:

This is the Government Plan rather than the business plan, so on page 173 of the Government Plan there is a short section on the Health Insurance Fund and it says: "During this Government Plan, there will be a significant shift to providing more health care through primary care practitioners, with new community-based services and modern technological solutions. The costs to be met by the fund and the level of patient out-of-pocket fees for primary care services will be reviewed over this period. The fund is well placed to support this transformation." In other words, there is money in the fund to help and that is what the Minister has been describing. We do not yet know what the Jersey Care Model will throw up because of the detailed works that will be done over the next few months, but once that work has been done we will know, and the Minister has spoken to the Minister for Health and Social Services, as to the possibility of using Health Insurance Fund money.

[15:30]

That can be used in 2 separate ways; one way is to have more services being delivered through more traditional routes with G.P. services, so that might be outpatient appointments being able to take place in G.P. surgeries rather than in the hospital; that might be with a doctor or a nurse, it does not really matter, but you have a contract in the Health Insurance Fund to pay for that, so that will be kind of a double running cost. Then the second one is taking money from the Health Insurance Fund and, with States' permission, because it would need the permission of the States to do that, to transfer some money to be used to do some delivery, some transformational work, around really getting the new model up and running, which could be around I.T., all sorts of things, training, a variety of things.

Deputy M.R. Le Hegarat :

That is us on time to the dot basically. Thank you very much and thank you to those people who have attended and also those listening on live stream, thank you very much.

[15:31]