2.24 The civilian Voluntary Early Release Scheme was announced across the Department on 28 February 2011 through two schemes: senior civil servants and grades below. There were no exemptions12 and any civil servant could apply. The Department expected to release 4,000 staff in tranche one but actually received 13,500 applications. Such a high level of interest could indicate poor morale among the Department's civilian workforce with large numbers of people seeking to leave.
2.25 To enable it to make early financial savings, the Department offered terms to 8,000 applicants and subsequently made 7,700 offers. To date, 5,900 of those offers have been accepted. Although increasing the number of offers to be made enhanced the costs of tranche one by £100 million, the Department estimated it would save an additional £260 million through earlier reductions in the payment of salaries, pension contributions and benefits. The Department has not, so far, had to make any compulsory redundancies in its civilian workforce and announced tranche two of the Voluntary Early Release Scheme in November 2011.
2.26 The military scheme is slightly different. If an application is accepted, the applicant has up to six months to leave the Armed Forces. Non-applicants who are selected for compulsory redundancy have up to 12 months to leave once notified. Therefore, non-applicants offer less savings than applicants as the Department must continue to pay salaries and benefits for longer.
2.27 To date, the first tranches of the civilian early release and military redundancy campaigns have progressed without significant problems. The redundancies and early releases have not occurred exactly as profiled with the consequence that the Department has needed to re-profile numbers of people being made redundant in each tranche. It also has had to adjust its plans to take account of the profile of those people in terms of salary, and for the military, those who have applied for redundancy and those selected for redundancy. Changes to predictions of natural wastage have also led to the need to re-profile. The need to re-profile is not surprising given the complexity of the redundancy programme.
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12 Except for staff working for the US visiting forces.