Government Departments: Coronavirus

(asked on 10th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 6 November 2020 to Question 110196 on Government Departments: Staff, what Non-casework resource was reassigned from the Windrush Compensation Scheme to the Covid Helpline.


Answered by
Priti Patel Portrait
Priti Patel
This question was answered on 18th November 2020

Non-casework staff that supported the Covid Helpline included team members with specific call centre expertise and experienced call handlers. The former supported the team for a short period to set up the Helpline, including call centre systems, management data production and development of tools for call handlers. These team members were not reassigned to the Covid Helpline. Experienced Call handlers were reassigned to the team and supported the training and mentoring of new team members and receipt of customer calls.

The redeployment had minimal impact on performance as team members had been upskilled to undertake a variety of duties across the team so that work could be prioritised. Intake on claims and calls was lower than forecast which enabled the support to be agreed. The support was reviewed in line with intake and team members were returned to the team in a staged process to ensure that both areas had the resource that they required.

We are aware of nine unfortunate cases to date where the claimant has passed away since January 2019, of which one claim received a final decision.

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