§ Mrs. MahonTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) if he will list the locations, broken down by parliamentary constituencies, of all the offices identified in his announcement on 29 June relating to the centralisation of benefit processing centres; [184335]
428W(2) if he will list the locations, broken down by parliamentary constituencies, of each of the proposed benefit processing centres referred to in his announcement on 29 June; and within what timescale decisions on the locations of the remaining benefit processing centres will be made; [184336]
(3) what the proposed timescale is for carrying out the centralisation of benefit processing referred to in his announcement on 29 June. [184337]
§ Maria EagleThe offices impacted by the announcement on 29 June were the ten pension centres referred to in the following table, together with details of the constituency in which each is located:
Office Constituency Burnley Pension Centre Burnley Derby Pension Centre Derby South Liverpool Pension Centre Liverpool Walton Norwich (Baltic House) Pension Centre Norwich South Nottingham Pension Centre Nottingham South Plymouth Pension Centre Plymouth, Devonport Stockton Pension Centre Stockton South Wolverhampton Pension Wolverhampton South West Centre Wrexham Pension Centre Wrexham York Pension Centre Ryedale Of the 10 sites identified, six will become part of the Jobcentre Plus Network predominantly as benefit processing centres. These are Derby, Norwich (Baltic house) Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Stockton and Wrexham.
The plans for the remaining pension centres are being developed and we are looking for opportunities to transfer estate and people to other parts of the department, other Government Departments or the private sector. I will inform the House as soon as plans are final and firm decisions are made.
The announcement also signalled the intention of Jobcentre Plus to begin centralising their processing work—moving from a large number of dispersed sites nationally to a smaller number of larger sites.
Detailed planning work is currently underway to determine the number and location of these sites. I will report these locations when planning is complete. The centralisation of benefit processing will be implemented in a rolling programme for completion by 2008 at the latest.