Next Steps Agencies (Hansard, 31 January 1995)

§ Mr. Heseltine

I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 17 January,Official Report, column 400. Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the chief executives of the nine agencies for which my Department is responsible. I have therefore asked Mr. John Hobday of the Account Services Agency; Mr. David Durham of Companies House; Mr. Peter Joyce of the Insolvency Service; Dr. Richard Worswick of the Laboratory of the Government Chemist; Mr. William Edgar of the National Engineering Laboratory; Dr. Peter Clapham of the National Physical Laboratory; Dr. Seton Bennett of the National Weights and Measures Laboratory; Dr. Paul Hartnack of the Patent Office; and Mr. Jim Norton of the Radiocommunications Agency to arrange for answers to be given.

Letter from W. Edgar to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 31 January 1995:

PARLIAMENTARY QUESTION No. 180 The President of the Board of Trade has asked me to reply to your question relating to various items of expenditure incurred by NEL as a Next Steps Agency. NEL has not acquired its headquarters building. Since achieving agency status it has reduced from 13 to 5 the number of principal buildings it uses. Since achieving agency status NEL has reduced its support staff by about 43%. The only periodical journal published by NEL is its annual report which, unlike its pre-agency status annual report, is also used as a marketing document. Pre-agency there were two vehicles which could have been described as executive cars now there are three, the additional annual cost being £7900 per annum. All of the vehicles are available for general laboratory duties as required. NEL uses the same logo as it has had for almost 40 years. The number of staff issued with 604W corporate clothing has been reduced from 7 to 2 since NEL became an agency. There have been no costs incurred in the special design of stationery. As is normally the case, the stationery has been updated from time to time to add the symbols associated with the additional quality accreditations obtained by the establishment, no special design costs were incurred in incorporating these additions. I trust you will find the above information to be satisfactory for your purposes.

Letter from Jim Norton to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 31 January 1995:

AGENCY MATTERS The President of the Board of Trade has asked me to reply to your question about certain Agency expenditure and resource requirements. The Agency has not acquired a new headquarters building as a result of becoming an Agency. The Agency will be moving to a new building in Docklands later this year since the lease on Waterloo Bridge House is about to expire. The Agency has 15 staff carrying out support functions which have been delegated to the Agency by the Department. The Agency issues a number of periodical publications, including the Annual Report, at a total annual cost of £120k. The Agency does not have any executive cars. The design of the Agency corporate logo cost £5k. The cost of corporate clothing is £12k per annum. The cost of Agency stationery in 1994/95 will be around £80k. However this is no increase on the equivalent DTI stationery.

Letter from Peter Joyce to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 31 January 1995: The President of the Board of Trade has asked me to reply to your Question about the costs of a number of Insolvency Service operational matters. The Service has not acquired any separate headquarters buildings since it was established as an agency in March 1990: both its London and Birmingham headquarters share buildings with Official Receivers' offices: its Edinburgh Disqualification Unit, set up prior to March 1990, shares a building with the Scottish Office. There has been a continuing process of delegation of support functions previously undertaken by central divisions of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI): the effect on overall resources, so far as I have been informed, has been neutral—any additional resources have been at least matched by reductions in central divisions' staffing. The Service is required to publish an Agency Annual Report: the publication cost for the last Report (1993–94) was some £13,000. It does not have or use executive cars. Its logo was designed in-house using ideas from staff: the cost was negligible. It does not have corporate clothing for any of its staff. It does not use specially designed and printed stationery beyond the incorporation of its logo on its letters etc, which is automatically produced by the word processing software, and where appropriate its corporate colour on its publications, replacing the DTI logo and colour.

Letter from Seton Bennett to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 31 January 1995: The President of the Board of Trade has asked me to reply on behalf of the National Weights and Measures Laboratory to your question about expenditure in Next Steps agencies.

Buildings Prior to becoming an agency, NWML occupied a single building, part of DTI's estate, for which rent was paid. These arrangement were not been affected by NWML becoming an agency in 1989. The annual rent for the building is £239,000.

Support Staff NWML currently has the same number of support staff as it had before it became an agency. The additional administrative duties associated with being an agency have been absorbed within the existing allocation of staff.

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Journals Between 1 April 1993 and 31 March 1994, NWML spent £8245.67 on publications distributed to UK industry and Local Authorities.

Executive Cars No NWML staff have executive cars. Prior to becoming an agency, NWML owned one pool car. Since becoming an agency it has disposed of the car and replaced it with a lease arrangement for a smaller car.

Logos The agency has not spent any money on logo design.

Clothing The agency has spent £1414.52 on corporate clothing (150 ties, 50 scarves and umbrellas) since 1989.

Corporate Stationery NWML has not changed the design of letterheads, compliment slips or business cards as a result of becoming an agency. Its expenditure on these items in 1993–94 was £2,310.58 which is approximately the same annual expenditure as before becoming an agency.

Letter from R. D. Worswick to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 24 January 1995: The President of the Board of Trade has asked me to reply in respect of the Laboratory of the Government Chemist (LGC) to your Parliamentary Question (No. 180) about certain costs incurred by Next Steps Agencies in the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The position on the points you raise is as follows:

(i) LGC has not acquired any of its buildings. It has occupied premises, including its main laboratory, which form part of the DTI's estate at Teddington since 1988 (when it relocated from central London) and pays an annual rental to Property Holdings;
(ii) as a result of organisational and operational changes which have affected LGC since it became an Executive Agency in 1989 it is not possible to give a precise response to the changing requirements for support staff over the past five years or so. The Laboratory's total support staff has risen from a complement of 64 in 1989/90 to a total of 67 in the current financial year. This increase reflects the considerable additional administrative responsibilities which the Laboratory undertakes. A range of tasks previously carried out by DTI centrally are now covered by LGC's Human Resources, Accounts and Finance and IT Groups and a Business Development Group has been set up during this period. A Strategic Research Unit (five staff) to support our scientific activity has recently been created but this is not included in the figures for support staff above;
(iii) the Laboratory publishes an Annual Report and Accounts, and produces on average two issues of the Government Chemist bulletin a year. The cost of these in 1993/94 was approximately £30k;
(iv) the Laboratory has no executive cars;
(v) the Laboratory first used a logo in 1978/79 on headed stationery, publicity material etc. The design work was carried out within DTI;
(vi) the Laboratory has a long standing policy of issuing clothing to staff primarily for health and safety reasons (in some instances as a statutory requirement) e.g. laboratory coats and gloves, external site working equipment such as helmets, boots and overalls. In addition staff in the Laboratory's Post Room are issued with uniforms including safety shoes. The total cost of these items in 1993/94 was approximately £7k;
(vii) the cost of stationery (including letterheaded paper which incorporates an LGC logo) to the Laboratory in 1993/94 was approximately £4k.

I hope this meets with your requirements.

Letter from Dr. Peter Clapham to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 31 January 1995: The President of the Board of Trade has asked me to reply to your Question concerning the cost of building etc., used by Next 606W Step Agencies. This reply concerns the National Physical Laboratory. Taking each of your questions in turn: Headquarters Building: NPL has not acquired any additional buildings to those occupied prior to becoming an Agency. Support Staff: While the balance of our support specialisms has changed, NPL has not acquired any net additional support staff since becoming an Agency. Such additional tasks as have been delegated to the Agency, eg wider personnel responsibilities, have been absorbed by existing staff. Periodical Journals: NPL has continued to publish NPL News once or twice a year—there has been no significant change in cost since becoming an Agency. Cars: NPL does not operate any executive cars. Logos: NPL has always maintained its own 'house style' and has revised it from time to time for promotional reasons. The East occasion was just prior to becoming an Agency, and the design cost was borne by the Department (about £3,000). Clothing: NPL has introduced no new corporate clothing, but a number of industrial staff now wear overalls bearing the current logo at negligible additional cost. Stationery: NPL has its own printing facilities for technical reports etc, and most corporate stationery is printed in-house at marginal cost. The Agency's total stationery costs are about £25k per annum. I hope this provides the information you were seeking.

Letter from P. R. S. Hartnack to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 31 January 1995: The President of the Board of Trade has asked me to respond to your Question about costs incurred by Next Steps agencies in his Department. The Patent Office became an executive agency in March 1990 and over the following two years we relocated from London to a new building in Newport, South Wales. In October 1991 we became a trading fund and acquired title to the new building at a cost of £17 million. Over the last five years we have reduced our cost base by about £7 million a year, partly because of lower accommodation costs, partly by efficiency savings, and partly because staff numbers have reduced in line with a long-standing decline in demand for our services following the establishment of a European Patent Office in Munich in 1978. We currently have 963 staff in post including 218 support staff (ie staff who are in support of our core functions of granting patents and registering trade marks and designs) compared with 1179 staff in post, including 285 support staff, on 1 March 1990. We publish a number of journals in line with statutory obligations: the Official Journal (Patents) at an annual cost of £77,890; the Trade Mark Journal at an annual cost of £78,528; and Reports of Patents, Design and Trade Mark Cases at an annual cost of £8,580. The cost of our Annual Report to Parliament for 1993–94 was £18,000. Non-statutory publications centre on free information about how to go about obtaining patents, trade marks and registered designs and we send out a total of nearly 250,000 information packs each year at a printing cost of £130,000. We also publish occasional material such as monographs on patent trends. Our total statutory and non-statutory printing costs are around £600,000 a year. We have no fleet of executive cars, and we have no single executive cars. Our logo (see heading of this letter) was created in 1986 by the DTI's Information Division at no cost to the Patent Office. The cost of overprinting standard stationery with the logo (1,500,000 sheets a year) is £4,000. We have a flag incorporating the logo which cost £268. We have no corporate clothing and we do not have corporate stationery other than that described above.

Letter from John Hobday to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 27 January 1995: Your recent Parliamentary Question to the President of the Board of Trade asked a number of questions about the costs incurred by 607W Next Steps Agencies in his Department in introducing their own corporate identities. The Accounts Services Agency was created in October 1991. Since when:

(i) the Agency has acquired its one and only operational centre the rental for which for 1994–95 was £135,125
(ii) it has not been necessary to increase the number of support staff
(iii) ASA has not published any periodical journals other than its three Annual Reports the cost of which were £6,410.10 in total
(iv) the Agency does not possess any official cars
(v) the Agency's logo was designed at a cost of £100—the prize for an in-house staff competition
(vi) no corporate clothing is used
(vii) the costs of specially designed and printed corporate stationery was £19,147.15

The costs quoted include VAT. Some of these costs would be matched by savings on the equivalent Departmental budgets.

Letter from David Durham to Mr. Gerald Kaufman, dated 31 January 1995: You asked the President of the Board of Trade the following question: (PQ180) To ask the President of the Board of Trade, if he will set out for each of the Next Steps agencies in his Department, whether they have acquired their own headquarters buildings and, if so, at what purchase cost or annual rental; how many support staff they have required which were not required when their operations were within his Department; how many of them published periodical journals and at what annual cost; how many have fleets of executive cars or single executive cars and at what annual cost; how many have specially designed logos and at what cost; how many have corporate clothing and at what cost; and what is the cost of specially designed and printed corporate stationery. I have been asked to respond direct to you as Chief Executive of Companies House Executive Agency.

Headquarters Building Companies House headquarters occupies a property in Cardiff that has been a crown freehold since it was built in 1975. No change in ownership has occurred as a consequence of CH becoming an executive agency. The property's book value in CH's balance sheet for 31 March 1994 was £13.8 million.

Support Staff It is now over 6 years since CH became an executive agency, and the many changes in the nature of our operations make comparisons between staff functions over this period of time difficult. The total number of staff in post (measured as full-time equivalents) has fallen from 1081 on 3 October 1988 (Agency Day) to 1006 at 31 December 1994. Of these, 156 were classified as "support staff' in October 1988, compared with 184 in December 1994. However the term "support" staff includes computer, accounting, and building service staff as well as other functions such as personnel, typing, training and customer service. The largest single category of support staff are computer staff, whose numbers increased from 43 to 58, reflecting the much greater use of information technology to deliver CH's services.

Periodicals Companies House publishes a periodical called "The Register", which is used to disseminate information about changes in company law, current prices for our services and details of new services, and information about our performance against published targets. It is distributed free to anyone who wishes to receive it, and published four times a year. The present annual cost of publication, including postage, is approximately £70,000 for a circulation of 22,000 per issue.

Executive Cars There are no cars provided for staff, executive or otherwise. The costs of official travel by car are reimbursed by means of Treasury and Inland Revenue approved mileage rates. In certain cases, involving longer journeys, staff are encouraged to use hire cars where this is cheaper than standard mileage rates.

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Specially Designed Logos and Stationery The present CH logo was part of a single, integrated corporate design exercise undertaken in 1990, which included corporate stationery designs as well as the logo itself. It is not possible to separate out the design cost of the logo alone. The total design cost was £30,000. The great bulk of our stationery costs arise from the printing and distribution of statutory forms and notes for guidance for companies. To try to answer your question, we have looked at our costs for standard A4 corporate letterhead stationery. We presently pay £320 per 10,000 sheets of 80gm 1 side, 2 colour paper. We understand that this is in fact less than that paid for comparable items by our parent Department, DTI.

Corporate Clothing CH provides uniform clothing for all staff working in areas open to the public. Clothing is provided for 64 staff at an average cost per person of £105.