Last year was a challenging year for the Employment Service (ES) - perhaps the most demanding since becoming an Executive Agency in April 1990. However, against a difficult labour market background, ES performance was consistently good, either meeting or coming close to the very stretching targets which had been set by the Government. Here are some examples of what was achieved during the year.
5.4.1.1. Helping unemployed people back into work
In total, 1,420,000 people were placed into jobs - just 5,000 short of the overall target. Of these, 24% (345,000) were long-term claimants; 34% (almost 490,000) were people in inner cities and over 40,000 (2.8%) were people with disabilities. Such performance is all the more commendable when it is borne in mind that ES actually received 80,000 fewer vacancies than anticipated.
Placements of long-term claimants were particularly impressive, being nearly 75,000 more than targeted. Two programmes - Jobclub and Job Interview Guarantee - between them placed nearly 150,000 long-term claimants into jobs. Helping disabled people into work, too, was a successful area, where the new Placing Assessment and Counselling Teams (PACTs) showed an improvement in placings of 24% over the last year.
5.4.1.2. Benefit payment
On the benefits side, ES met all its targets, despite high levels of unemployment: over 96% of unemployment benefit payments were made correctly; 94% of claims were input with six days; and over 61,000 claims were withdrawn following investigation.
5.4.1.3. A cost-effective and quality service
In 1992/93 ES achieved efficiency savings of £17.9 million in a variety of ways, including better methods of procuring goods and services and the continuing programme of integrating Jobcentres and Benefit Offices. At the end of the year, ES was within its budget of £1.162 billion.
Over the last few years, ES has been working hard to improve the quality of service on offer to clients. The Jobseeker's Charter has been introduced, which sets out minimum standards for the services offered and encourages clients to measure performance against them. Clients' views are also collected regularly by means of national and local customer satisfaction surveys. With the Benefits Agency, ES is looking at ways of working jointly to make the benefits system simpler and easier to administer.
5.4.1.4. Other achievements
Real progress has been made too in other areas of business during the course of the year: for example, starting in November 1992, roll-out began of a new computerised benefit payment system which is due to be in place in the whole network of local offices by September 1994; a computerised system has been set up in nearly 700 offices to support the administration of Claimant Adviser work; and a unified advisory service has been implemented, whereby a single group of advisers carry out the full range of advisory and counselling tasks.
5.4.1.5. The year ahead
Next year ES again has a demanding set of targets, with the most comprehensive range of programmes and services ever available to clients. The way business is handled is also being developed, to make sure that a high quality of service is offered to clients and to ensure the cost-effectiveness and value for money of operations. A tough year lies ahead; ES will be trying to make this one as successful as the last.
EU – European Commission DG EMPL/A/2 J
II 27,
Rue de la Loi 200, B-1049 Brussels – Belgium
GHK Consulting Ltd 30 St. Paul's Square, Birmingham. B3 1QZ
E-mail: eeo@ghkint.com
