§ Mr. DowdTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many casual staff have been made924W redundant from Employment Service offices in each region and at each office in the past year.
§ Miss WiddecombeResponsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from M. E. G. Fogden to Mr. Jim Dowd, dated 19 December 1994:
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question about how many casual staff have been made redundant from the Employment Service in the past year, by both Region and local office.The Employment Service (ES) has always employed a proportion of casual staff to enable it to manage staffing levels as unemployment rises and falls. At a time when unemployment is falling, termination of casual contracts is the obvious, sensible step to take and in fact avoids any necessity for redundancies among permanent staff.Casual staff in the ES have contracts which are renewable up to a maximum of 51 weeks (103 weeks in exceptional circumstances). Under the terms of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978, only an employee who has a minimum two years continuous service can be regarded as redundant. The number of casual employees who have been made redundant by the ES during the past year therefore is nil.However, in line with the fall in unemployment, the ES has recently reduced the number of casual appointments, with the number of contracts terminated in the 12 months ending 30 November being 7,300. The majority (7,142) were of Administrative Assistant and Administrative Officer level.Breakdown of this figure by Regional and Head Office locations is as follows, although details of contracts terminated by individual offices are, unfortunately, not available.
Regional/head office location Contracts terminated Office for Scotland 564 Northern Region 353 North West Region 1,050 Yorkshire and Humberside Region 465 Office for Wales 291 West Midlands Region 930 East Midlands Region 520 South West Region 416 London and South East Region 2,578 London Head Office 3 Sheffield Head Office 130 Total 7,300 I hope this is helpful.