The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is recruiting spin doctors to sell its restructuring programme to its own staff.
As part of the BIS 2020 programme, which seeks to reduce the department’s operating costs by £350m and staff headcount by 5,000 by the year 2020, it is closing its biggest office outside of London, in Sheffield, and moving all policy jobs to the capital.
Sheffield MPs have questioned how relocating jobs to the capital would save the taxpayer money after the universities and science minister, Jo Johnson, was forced to admit that the annual cost of rent, rates and maintenance for an employee at the office in Sheffield was £3,190, compared with £9,750 at the headquarters in Westminster.
The department has invited communications companies to bid for a government contract worth up to £55,000 to sell the restructuring to BIS staff and “help them understand and engage with the new business model”.
A tender document released in May reads: “The purpose of bringing in an experienced agency at this stage is to help us to expedite this project quickly and to provide strong facilitation to discussions at all levels.”
The MP for Sheffield Central, Paul Blomfield, said the fact that the department felt it had to employ spin doctors to sell the case for its restructuring plans to its own staff demonstrated the weakness of its position.
“It’s also a further waste of public money,” he said. “The department should be thinking creatively about how they can best benefit from policymaking outside the capital at lower cost, not hiring communications experts at taxpayers’ expense to spin their flawed plans.”
Last month, MPs approved a motion that called for the National Audit Office to conduct a cost-benefit assessment of the decision to close the BIS office in Sheffield. “I am sure the National Audit Office will have a lot to say when it reports on the value for money of the department’s decision,” said Blomfield, whose constituency includes the BIS office in Sheffield.
The BIS 2020 strategy was put together after the management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company conducted two reviews of the department’s operations, at a cost of £199,000 of public money.
Initial plans to close the Sheffield BIS office by 2018 were announced in January, prompting criticism that the decision contradicted the rhetoric surrounding the chancellor’s “northern powerhouse” project. The project aims to boost economic growth in the north of England and is partly administered by BIS.
After weeks of protest and strike action at the department’s office in Sheffield, its 247 staff were told last month they would either lose their jobs when the office closes in January 2018 or face a move to London.
The Public and Commercial Services union representative, Marion Lloyd, said the government had failed to listen to BIS staff in Sheffield and the union’s members unanimously agreed to further strike action when the closure was confirmed.
A BIS spokesperson said: “Led by the permanent secretary and his executive board, our BIS 2020 business model will modernise the way the department works to become smaller, more responsive and efficient, as well as saving around £350m for the taxpayer by 2020 in operational costs.
“This transformation programme applies to 20,000 staff in BIS across the UK and all of its locations and partner bodies. It’s therefore important that we support and engage with staff on delivering this ambitious restructure and change.”
