24 March 2010 – Budget 2010: DWP Delivers Efficiency and Smarter Government Savings
Today the Department for Work and Pensions announces that it will deliver £350m of savings, as part of £11bn savings across Government which will contribute towards halving the deficit over four years while protecting frontline services.
The Budget has reaffirmed the Government's commitment to making £11bn of savings a year by 2012/13 from efficiency and streamlining the centre of Government. Departments are setting out their contributions to these savings.
The £11bn of savings will contribute to halving net borrowing and protecting key public services. The savings will come following the work of the Operational Efficiency Programme and Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government.
DWP will meet its commitment through a range of activities, including:
- £40 million of savings in its property costs including using benchmarking to identify and improve utilisation in its property costs, including its estate;
- £180m through getting better value out of our major contracts, including our IT contracts, primarily by working more closely with our suppliers and by reducing demand;
- reducing the size of our Senior Civil Service and streamlining our support services.
DWP has also committed to making an additional £200m of savings through delivering benefits more efficiently as part of the Public Value Programme, bringing total savings from DWP to £550m.
The Department outlined its record on making savings to date, and its priorities for the future, earlier this week in a document 'Delivering More for Less – the Efficiency Programme of the DWP'.
Notes to Editors
- PBR 2009 announced that £11bn savings would be delivered by 2012/13 from Operational Efficiency Review conclusions and from Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government.
- Today's Budget announces examples of how departments will deliver savings will come from £8bn Operational Efficiencies; £0.5bn reforms to Arms Length Bodies; over £650m from reducing spend on marketing, communication and consultancy budgets; £0.5bn from reducing spend on IT programmes; £0.3bn from reducing spend on energy; and, £0.14bn from reducing spend on the senior civil service and reducing days lost to sickness.
- These savings will contribute towards reducing borrowing and protecting frontline priorities.
- The Department is also making changes to improve its service and save money through launching a new bereavement service which will mean more customers needing only one contact with the Department, allowing them to get all the information they need on benefits and help with funeral costs in one place; expanding our online services so people can claim their pension or Jobseeker's Allowance online, using our workspace and IT resources more flexibly, taking further action to reduce fraud and error in the benefit system and recover debt from overpayments, reducing the amount of office space we use, reducing spend on consultants and improving procurement.
- Every working day our staff:
- take an average of 10,000 new job vacancies
- help around 5,000 people move into work
- receive over 85,000 calls to Jobcentre Plus contact centres
- pay 3 million customers over £50million every day
- receive around 1.1 million job searches for Jobcentre Plus vacancies using the Jobcentre Plus and Directgov websites
- DWP has saved a total of £1,446 million through efficiency savings up to March 2008.
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