Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 15
15
Accepted
UKSV understaffing necessitates service trade-offs, impacting aftercare checks and DV renewals.
Conclusion
Under-staffing has led UKSV to make trade-offs in what service areas it focuses on. For example, the UKSV chief executive told us that by focusing on new DV clearances it was unable to resource aftercare checks to the levels needed.35 Likewise, the focus on new DV clearances saw average clearance times drop for those cases but for DV renewals, average clearance times increased from 190 days in April 2022 to 255 days in November 2022.36
Government Response Summary
UKSV has identified a need for and secured funding for a temporary surge of contingent labour for 2023-24 to address backlogs and stabilise performance, making progress on recruitment and training. For the transformation programme, efforts are ongoing to recruit digital professionals, with a discovery exercise to inform the future resourcing model in an October 2023 business case.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 4.2 UKSV has identified a requirement for a temporary surge of contingent labour and fixed term contracts for the financial year 2023-24 to support the meeting of customer demand and stabilisation of performance through clearance of the backlog of cases. Burden-share partners have agreed to fund this surge. The Cabinet Office has provided UKSV with the necessary approvals. There have been significant efforts over several months to recruit to the levels needed, and although UKSV is operating in a challenging market, good progress has been made. 4.3 In addition to recruitment, the training and deployment of staff into the vetting process is a significant undertaking and UKSV has redirected the majority of its enabling resources to support this activity. UKSV currently assesses that the funding and approvals are appropriate for the demands of the programme but will review this jointly with customers and Cabinet Office approvals teams in September 2023. 4.4 On the transformation programme, progress has been made on recruiting digital professionals to support the existing in-house IT delivery model. This remains a significant area of risk given the competitive market conditions for these skills. The outputs of the ongoing digital discovery exercise will inform the resourcing model and wider delivery approach for transformation moving forward. This approach will be set out in an Outline Business Case for consideration in October 2023.