1. Chair’s Opening Remarks - Karen Bolger
2. Adoption of the agenda - agreed
3. Apologies
4. Appointment of tellers
5. AGM 2017 Record of decisions - agreed
6. Branch Annual Report to the 2018 AGM (follow the links below) - agreed
7. Finance Report 2017 - agreed
8. Branch nominations (See below) - agreed
9. Home Office Group nominations (See below) - agreed
10. PCS National nominations (See below) - agreed
11. Motions for debate (See below)
12. Other business

Branch Annual Report to the 2018 AGM

Part 1: President & Secretary

Part 2: Finance, Organisation & Communications

Part 3: Health & Safety

Part 4: Review of 2017

PCS Home Office Merseyside Branch agreed nominations

Branch Executive Committee:

President - Karen Bolger

Vice President - Derek Mellor

Branch Secretary - Mike Richards

Assistant Secretary (4 posts) - Dean Barron (3 vacancies)

Organiser - Phil Mount

Treasurer - Vacant (1 vacancy)

Branch Executive Committee members (13 posts) - Simon Armstrong, Diane Burton, Tom Courtney, Nick Hobbs, Christine House, Sandra Lee-Boyd, Emma Mooney, Liz O'Connor, Liz Robinson, Mark Thompson, Toni Walsh-Shiel, Brian White (1 vacancy)

Auditor (2 posts) - Paul Darbyshire, Suzanne Savage

Delegates to PCS Home Office Group Conference (4 posts) - Karen Bolger, Emma Mooney, Phil Mount, Alan Saunders

Delegates to PCS National Conference (4 posts) - Karen Bolger, Nick Hobbs, Emma Mooney, Mike Richards

PCS Home Office Group agreed nominations

Home Office Group Executive Committee:

President - James Cox

Assistant Group Secretary - Sharon Edwards, Chris Kelly, Malcolm Davey, Mike Richards

Group Executive Committee members - Owen Hughes, Rebecca Hunter, Dil Joshi, Phil Mount, Mike Richards, Denise Speakman, Malcolm Speechley, Brian White

Group Standing Orders Committee - Helen Cawkwell

Group Editorial Board - Karen Alderson

PCS National agreed nominations

National Executive Committee:

President - Janice Godrich

Vice Presidents - Jackie Green, Fran Heathcote, Zita Holbourne, Kevin McHugh

National Executive Committee members - Mark Baker, Paula Brown, Clive Bryant, Martin Cavanagh, Harvey Crane, Alan Dennis, Felicity Flynn, Angela Grant, Sam Hall, Austin Harney, John Jamieson, Tahir Latif, Neil License, Marion Lloyd, Dominic McFadden, John McInally, Kenny McKay, John Maguire, Lorna Merry, Marianne Owens, Ian Pope, Annette Rochester, Alison Roder, Dace Semple, Steve Thorley, Candy Udwin, Karen Watts, Hector Wesley, Katrine Williams, Paul Williams

National Standing Orders Committee - Derek Mellor, Calum Walker

Agreed motions

Home Office Group Conference: Motions 1 (Sickness absence policy)

Conference notes the current Home Office Sickness absence policy and the ability for managers to give discretion for an absence if they so wish to do so. Whilst it’s welcomed that the line manager has that authority to give discretion, if an exception is not applicable, this comes at a cost.

Whilst the member or the Trade Union representative may feel that a warning is not warranted based upon the circumstances and make a case for discretion it usually comes as a surprise to learn that if this is granted, whilst it may negate the warning, the ‘sick days’ are still counted in the 12 month rolling period.

This can mean that a recent absence which receives discretion can leave the member with no further trigger points for almost 12 months until this particular period is eroded. Conference notes that it is likely that any days taken as sickness will re-trigger the absence in this period and a warning becomes a strong possibility as a number of managers are of the thinking that you cant give discretion for the same issue twice. Therefore the question of the value of discretion is one to consider.

This issue is especially difficult for members covered under the Equality Act 2010, who are by the nature of a number of disabilities, are likely to have more days of through sickness than others. It almost becomes inevitable that they would re-trigger a hearing and possible have a warning administered.

Conference calls for the GEC to review this element of the Policy and make a case to the Department for review. An ideal solution to this could be that the manager has the authority to discount the period from the rolling 12 months, if they think that this is the best course of action.

Home Office Group Conference: Motion 2 (Pay)

Conference notes the pay award for last year and the clear fact that this falls well below the rate of inflation and in essence amounts to a further pay cut in real terms. This comes on the back of years of pay cuts in the Home Office as well as the previous pay freeze.

When PCS outlines the true facts to members; this is usually done in a monetary form in order to hit home how much this is hurting our members across the Department. This is of course an excellent way of delivering the message to the membership and building the campaign to get a decent and fair wage rise.

Conference believes that there are other ways of presenting this information to members to hit home how damaging this has been and we should look to deploy these communications to members as we take forwards the campaign in 2018.

Conference requests that the GEC pay team consider the usage of alternative methods of highlighting to members the effects of the pay rise, such as:

How many hours or days in the working week are they now doing for no pay at all in comparison to were there pay should be based on pay progression before Tory austerity was implemented? How many days does this equate to throughout the year?

By deducting what members should be earning as opposed to what they are earning will give the true figure. This will show in stark detail how many hours and days of hard work members are giving, for free, to enable a bankrupt government subsidise a greedy banking system that has stifled real wages for real workers.

Home Office Group Conference: Motion 3 (Asylum)

Conference notes the setting up of a new Asylum office in Merseyside (Next Generation Casework) and the involvement of the GEC and local branch to date in securing jobs and increasing membership in this area.

Conference notes that the original position of Asylum management was to have the vast majority of posts in this unit to be on a casual basis. Early negotiations with the heads of unit negated this somewhat with the introduction of ‘fixed term appointments’ at the EO Decision making grade, as well as HEO technical specialists to support the caseworkers. Therefore, when the office opened we had the situation of SEO operations managers, HEO line managers, EO Managers, AO administrative staff all being casual.

As time moved on progress was made in further talks with the Department in order to make permanent the EO posts and receive commitments that all other posts would be converted into Civil Service status.

The Department still appears to be wedded to the use of agency staff and fails to learn the lessons of history. In fact the Chief executive has stated that his preference is for a ‘mix economy’ when it comes to staffing. In nearly every unit that has taken on agency staff it has caused a number of issues and usually results in the units having to seek to regularise the posts or indeed for them to be left in position for years. Therefore, we have the prohibitive cost of using agencies to provide staffing and then exercises to regularise the posts. At the centre of all this is of course the individual who works for these agencies, who attracts little in the way of employments rights and massively different terms and conditions of service compared to their Civil Service colleagues. No job security or surety when it comes to their employment status and conference believes this is unacceptable from a supposed ‘great Department of State’ and a so called ‘modern employer’.

The model of using agency staff has to be brought to a conclusion.

Conference calls on the GEC to take forward a campaign to:

• Publish to members via an MB on the principles of the campaign
• Highlight the failure of the agency model in the Department
• Push for tighter rules governing the use of agency staff.
• Encourage the Department annually publish the total cost of the use of agency staff to the staff via internal intranet.
• To review the current use of agency posts across the Department and seek to regularise these posts to ‘Civil Service Status’ via fair and open competition mechanism.
• To outline progress to members by October 2018

Home Office Group Conference: Motion 4 (Apprenticeships)

Conference notes the unsatisfactory situation apprentices in the home Office have faced since the beginning of their apprenticeships which started in 2017. While conference appreciates all the work the GEC are doing to try to address the many concerns of the apprentices right across the group such as quality of training, suitably trained managers, roles within the business being suitable and apprentices not just being used as extra staff to cover positions that should be permanent roles, and the continuing use of the training provider Premier Partnership, Merseyside branch has a specific issue relating to the training and pay side the apprentices in Liverpool have faced.

Most apprentices in Liverpool having started in June 2017 expecting 1 day a week training, which is part of the apprentices contract, did not start premier partnership training until approximately 3 months later. This means they had been working 5 days a week on their salary of £15,000 a year, only completing the Home office training on e learning which all staff have to do when starting work. At the training induction by premier partnership, which only occurred in September 2017, when apprentices asked about this they were told that their 18 month apprenticeship would actually involve only 14 months training. Although the question was asked as to whether the missed training days for the 3 months when they had worked a full 5 days would somehow be incorporated and added into the 14 months remaining training time no answer was given. Therefore in these circumstances conference instructs the GEC to:

Seek immediate monetary recompense from the department at the correct rate for the job for the 3 months training days that did not take place for all apprentices in Home Office Merseyside Branch and for which the business has basically had free labour for.

Seek to confirm if this has occurred in other parts of the Home Office and then seek the same recompense for all apprentices affected.

Publish any response from the department in the event they refuse to pay the apprentices for their free labour.This conference instructs the GEC to start the above actions as soon as possible after as conference is over and report back to members on any proposals, consultation and results.