EUSS loans to Asylum

EUSS staff loaned to Asylum

PCS Home Office Merseyside Branch reps met with senior management from both Euro and Asylum on 20 September regarding the upcoming loan moves of EUSS caseworkers to Asylum Ops Mersey until March 2022.

At the meeting PCS was advised that this was a ministerial instruction for European Casework to loan Decision Makers (DM) to Asylum to get the excessive WIP (work in progress) down while they wait for the new staff from the latest recruitment exercise to be in post.

Loaned DMs will be doing cases from certain countries that are considered more straightforward and will only be making decisions if they are found to be grants of asylum. These cases will be sifted before being allocated to the loan DMs. If it becomes apparent that the case is to be refused, the case will be handed off to experienced DMs.

PCS expressed our concern at the relative minimal training that the loan DMs will be getting, permanent Decision Makers get at least 6 months with options to extend this if further support is required, however the loaned DMs are only to have 4 weeks training. We were advised that this is because the loan DMs will only be doing grants and the interviews for the nationalities that they will be dealing with tend to be short and straightforward. The asylum training has recently become module-based and this has meant that the department has been able to pick out just the relative parts pertinent to the cases that the loan Decision Makers will be dealing with.

PCS raised the question of how productivity was to be managed and we were assured that productivity is looked at on a team rather than individual basis.

PCS made it clear that the majority of EUSS caseworkers have only ever done EUSS work in their Home Office career and therefore overall knowledge of immigration laws and indeed CID are likely to be relatively minimal. Management confirmed that the training would be delivered very much with this in mind and confirmed that if, as time goes on, a caseworker is struggling with the work, it will be reviewed on an individual basis without detriment to that member.

PCS questioned the department’s intentions come March 2022. We were told that there is no hidden agenda and no intention to make the moves permanent. It is the expectation that staff will return to their parent unit in March in line with this agreement as Asylum’s permanent recruitment builds up in late 2021. However, members should be aware that, as always, the priorities of the department at that time will be considered and it is PCS’s view that there is every possibility that this could be extended.

PCS have made it clear that our preference would be for these positions to be filled on a voluntary basis. We would expect some members to be keen on this loan move but others less so. We have been given no clear answer from EUSS management to why this request was not met.

Members affected who are concerned about the move are encouraged to speak to their local PCS reps or email us here, particularly where their concerns cannot be resolved by their line managers.