§ Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what has been the number of staff serving in social security offices each year since 1979; what has been the average work load each year in number of cases dealt with by each of them; how many Staff each year undertook home visits; how many home visits they made; and how many welfare visits each member of the visiting staff made on average each year.
§ Mr. Major[pursuant to his reply, 20 February 1986 c. 320.]: As certain figures given in my earlier reply were inconsistent, the basis of the table has been re-examined and a revised version is as follows. As will be seen, the trends are broadly the same as those indicated in the previous reply.
Local office †complement *Average workload Visits (including ineffective) Supp B †S.T.B. 1979–80 62,541 100 N/A 4,145,205 1980–81 62,424 101 N/A 4,352,026 1981–82 63,642 112 N/A 4,437,920 1982–83 61,871 129 N/A 4,168,382 1983–84 56,703 133 325 4,275,290 1984–85 58,182 130 318 3,658,564 Abbreviations: Supp B—Supplementary Benefit; STB—Short Term Benefits; N/A—Not Available.
Notes
* Number of cases in action divided by number of staff allocated to the work described;
† Complement at April excluding cleaners and security guards.
‡ Short Term Benefits include sickness benefit, invalidity benefit, non-contributory invalidity pension and severe disablement allowance.
No records are kept on the number of staff undertaking home visits, and no separate records are kept on welfare visits, although all home visits have a welfare aspect.