<p>Closure of Department for Work and Pensions Offices</p>

Part of 3. 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:00 pm on 12 July 2017.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:00, 12 July 2017

Well, indeed, that’s very much part of the conversation. We had a conversation about possible relocation areas for people from Llanelli, and a diverse range of places were mentioned, moving me to ask whether he had a map with the mountains marked on it. One of the areas that was mentioned was a possible relocation to Swansea waterfront, for example. I was explaining the difficulty of commuting from Llanelli centre to Swansea. That might not look like that much distance in the south-east, but here in Wales it is really quite a distance, and anyway the staff are likely to be coming from west of Llanelli.

So, I’ve made all of those points. We have made the point that we’re very unhappy about any kind of compulsory redundancy scheme. I will be reiterating that. But I would also like to say that, where people are affected by redundancy, if that’s what happens—and I am being assured at the moment that that will not happen—but if it does happen, then obviously we will work very hard to make sure that anybody affected gets the full benefit of our ReAct services and all the rest of it. So, we will want to be getting clarification from the work services director for Wales regarding the timing of the closures, the relocation plans and the likely effect on not only the staff but also the services offered to service users, and travel arrangements for them, and adjustment times and so on—really just getting as much detail as possible, (a) to continue the pressure on them not to make decisions that don’t make any sense in the context of Wales, and (b) where they do make those decisions, to make sure we line up our services to fill in the gaps, really.