Capita contract improvements - who benefits?
I've been trying to crunch some numbers to see where the £2.9m of extra 'investment' claimed by Helen Grant is likely to end up. Let's look at the improvements one at a time;
Paying at the worker tier rate rather than the job tier. Assuming that the vast majority of booking are tier 2, this will only benefit Tier 1 'terps', and if we further assume that about half of CTI 'terps' are tier 1, then the average extra benefit is worth £1/hour. For an average 3 hour assignment, that's £3.
Rounding booked time up to the nearest quarter. On average, this will add an extra 8 minutes of paid time, so that's another £2.80 for an average hourly rate of £21.
The £7-50 daily allowance.
Receiving 20p/mile for an extra 20 miles travel distance, that's worth £4, assuming the worst case that all 'terps' travel at least 10 miles to their assignments.
Adding up these amounts yields an extra £17-30 per day, if the 'terp' only fulfilled one booking per day. Of course, some 'terps' fulfil more than one assignment per day, in which case the extra benefit is much less. For a 'terp' that has 2, 2-hour bookings in the same place, they would only receive an extra £21.10, or £10.05 per booking.
Conversely, there will be some trials that will take a few days, so the benefits for that one assignment will be higher, so let's assume that this balances out the multi-assignment days. Based on MoJ statistics, the number of fulfilled bookings is about 110,000 per year, so multiplying that by £17.30 = £1.9m.
The final piece in the puzzle is the cancellation fee of £21, and according to MoJ statistics, there were 14,823 cancellations in the first year of the con trick....sorry... contract, which works out at £0.31m. Add this to the £1.9m already worked out, and the total is £2.21m, leaving about £0.69m for Capita to stuff into its own back pocket.
All of this assumes that the 'terps' actually see all of the cancellation fee, bearing in mind that in their T&Cs, they won't get it if Capita finds them an alternative booking, as described in their Interpreter handbook '...Please note a cancellation payment is only made where an Assignment has been cancelled by a customer and it does not apply where Capita TI needs to assign you to a more appropriate Assignment (for example where a closer booking has become available) or when we were able to secure you a replacement booking for that same day...'
Here's how it might work; Capita maintains a 'float' of booking requests that it makes no effort to fill, this is not a problem for Capita as it only costs it a £3-10 service credit not to provide a 'terp'. Then, when a cancellation comes along, Capita invoices MoJ for the £21 cancellation charge, but re-assigns the 'terp to one of the 'spare' requests it has held back in the 'float'.
If the 'terp doesn't want to take the assignment, tough. They were offered a job, so they are not entitled to the cancellation payment. Simples.
I have raised an FOI request to find out if Capita is entitled to receive the cancellation payment regardless of whether or not the 'terp' receives it.
