You can’t get a driving licence, driving test or a passport

[daimbarsatemydogsbone]

So Boris plans to cut 90000 civil service jobs.

How does he think this will help?

Just finished a contract for the DWP after losing my businesses in the pandemic. What a total mess that is inept management with no training lazy staff with terrible attitudes no idea of what is needed atall from Whitehall just complete and utter shambles I could not take it anymore I was signed off with stress - stress from having no work to do and middle management so inept and having to watch the waste haemorrhage with no appetite to change terrible terrible mess

.’91000 real people needing the food bank and UC.’

Not necessarily. Not at all.

My understanding is that the 91,000 posts would cut over a three year period.

Some will leave to go to new jobs, some retirements, some voluntary redundancies, some performance exits, some deaths in service…& then eventually compulsory redundancies. This is how many FTSE & other companies (for comparative size & skills of workforce) manage sharp cost reduction programmes, much of it due to counting of FTEs as new products/programmes/services are rolled out & not back filling expired or redundant roles. It makes for a tight fit during change programmes but it is not insurmountable.

Not everyone will be out in one day, not all will sign on for UC, & not all will need a food bank. Get a grip.

You do realise I suppose that back in 2009 the Government closed down all the tax offices across the country and got rid of all their experienced staff? The staff who were based in local towns, with local knowledge and who had responsibility for specific areas of work.

They were replaced by call centres who didn't even need to know what they were talking about because in the beginning at least they followed a script. But they were so much cheaper than paying people to do a proper job.

@catscatscatseverywhere why do you need to send your passport to home office? I got a new eu passport and got settled status added to it online in 5 minutes.

Err yes, I've been an accountant for over 30 years, so I'm well aware. None of that is relevant. I'm not talking about complex matters, I'm talking about things that are perfectly simple for someone with the minimal training, i.e. basic data input, basic tax code changes etc. They still have qualified/experienced staff for the complex matters.

much of it due to counting of FTEs as new products/programmes/services are rolled out & not back filling expired or redundant roles. It makes for a tight fit during change programmes

errrrghhh management bollockspeak alert.

I deal with HMRC a lot in my job. I could cry with frustration about how inefficient they are. The departments I have to liaise with are currently dealing with letters received in April 2021. 2021!!!! They are only just even OPENING POST sent to them in February.

If they cut more jobs I dread to think what will happen. It's like living in the 1800s, not the digital age

My passport was renewed in three weeks.

Which department is that? Because DH's current worklist is end March/mid April 2022.

Well at least we can just play polo instead of worrying about it

So we'll take 91000 CS roles and end up contracturising them. My team is operating at 60% of our actual headcount because of so called workforce efficiencies. More work keeps getting place on us so I'm spending hundreds of thousands on contractors to try and get key programmes across the line. A contractor costs me triple what a CS post does!

The Government would soon change their tune if they had to report contractor spending in Departments rather than just CS numbers

And planning. Anything to do with planning is an absolute shitshow at the moment.

My local government office is still 3/4 empty. Its time all were back in. Im sick and tired of hearing lame reasons why colleagues cannot answer the phone like

hanging washing on the line
mum was here
kid crying

others saying “i like being home, saves me petrol” you took the job on to work in the office. That’s where you belong.

i call people and kids are in the background. These people seriously aren’t working. They wouldn’t bring in mum or kid to the office.

shops, cafes and salons etc are closing in towns and cities because people are home. There us no reason for it now.

Ive also worked for the civil service and the amount of jobs the can create out of nothing is astonishing. Jobs for the boys..,

“

There won't be 90000 redundancies. There'll be a fairly small number of redundancies through natural expiration of covid related roles. And then natural downsizing as people leave through retirement or for other reasons, over the course probably of a couple of years.

I got did her driving licence recently - 2 weeks it took online

passport renewal took 16 days this month

it’s been well overhyped

there are plenty late I agree but there’s huge numbers as vast majority are on time

Unfortunately I do, because I have new last name.

Typical Tory cut, cut, cut.

I dislike the Tories as much as the next sensible person.
But did I read correctly that a 91,000 cut takes the CS back to 2016 levels?
Why the fuck have the CS needed to add 91,000 in 8 years?
Private sector, huge company, massive growth in last 8+ years, very small additional headcount.

Which is not to say I’m not sympathetic to 91,000 individuals.

@hospedia
It's the MVL team

I had a nightmare trying to get my driving license back after a fixed term suspension following surgery. I needed an eye test to confirm vision before they’d reissue but all the opticians that were authorised to do it were booked up - even though when I rang up they could fit me in that week. They couldn’t give timelines, blamed it on remote working (despite most businesses having some semblance of BAU at this point). In the end I had to contact my MP and threaten legal action for impeding my job and therefore my earnings.

Suddenly they found an appointment and my license was back with me in 10 days.

There was a huge recruitment drive within the CS to deal with Brexit, then lots of recruitment to deal with covid, in both cases, across multiple departments. I'd imagine a lot of the 91k are in those roles which are probably genuinely "redundant" now that the dust has settled.

@Testina - did you not notice Brexit and covid? The EU used to do loads of work the UK now has to reinvent and do itself. The referendum was in 2016. Note also, the civil service was reduced in size between 2010 and 2016 by 20%. I would say civil service performance has got markedly worse since 2010 when the Tory-led governments started hacking it back…

I only have a 3 year medical driving licence. It ran out last Jan (2021). I finally got the replacement this month.

I bloody needed it for a DBS (no passport currently).

Leaving the EU was never really going to make this country more efficient, or remove bureaucracy and red tape - it was guaranteed to create oodles more bureaucracy and red tape, because we stepped away from frictionless trade and increased hugely the number of countries we have to play off against each other and piss off. That requires a lot of work and a lot of people, and a huge amount of reinventing the wheel on an austerity budget.