The permanent secretary of the Department for Work and Pensions has said the current wide-ranging reorganisation of his department is necessary in order to find spending review savings and deliver changes to the benefits system.

Asked whether he was trying to do “too much, too soon”, Robert Devereux told the Civil Service Live – The Midlands event in Birmingham last Friday that “my view about this is that it’s not increasing the risks for the future. I’m doing this solely to de-risk my chance of actually delivering [changes to the benefits system]”.

Devereux is making major changes to simplify the DWP’s structure, while Jobcentre Plus chief executive Darra Singh is to leave by the end of September. Devereux said: “All that I’ve embarked upon now is to try to make that centre rather more integrated, and singular, and focused on making a success of the frontline – not least because the budget [for the central DWP] is for a 40 per cent reduction. I don’t think I can afford to run the corporate centre that I’ve inherited in the light of that.”

He insisted that staff saw the need for the transformation: “If you talk to people in this space they say: ‘You’ve got a point,’ because there are so many centres of power, even within the centre, that there’s quite a lot of duplication; people watching each other; things not moving as smoothly as they should; too much testing and checking; too much reporting.”

The PCS Union has attacked the plans, with general secretary Mark Serwotka suggesting that staff are being “set up to fail” and claiming that 5,000 central jobs are to go out of 13,000. The union claims that the executive agencies Jobcentre Plus and the Pensions, Disability and Carers Service are being brought back into the DWP, but a DWP spokesperson denied that any decisions have been made: “We have not changed the status of any of our agencies,” she said.

Civil Service Live – The Midlands is produced by CSW publishers Dods.

Written by Joshua Chambers