Top of Form
Bottom of Form
September 29, 2014 11:09 pm
Universal credit project boss Howard Shiplee quits
By Sarah Neville, Public Policy Editor
Universal credit, the troubled welfare reform programme, has undergone yet another change of leadership following the announcement that its current boss Howard Shiplee is relinquishing the helm.
The appointment of Mr Shiplee, who served as director of construction for the London 2012 Olympics, was hailed as a coup when he took over the programme in May last year.
However, by the new year he had fallen ill with bronchitis and John Manzoni, head of the Major Projects Authority, recently confirmed that he had worked only part-time since.
Announcing his appointment in March 2013, Robert Devereux, permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, praised his “wealth of experience in the successful delivery of projects of significant scale and complexity”. This background would be “invaluable” as the rollout of the universal credit programme began, he suggested.
However, on Monday, Iain Duncan Smith, welfare secretary, said Mr Shiplee “had always been clear that, as the programme moves into national delivery, [it] must be led by someone with strong operational experience”.
Mr Shiplee would “continue to support the programme in a non-executive and advisory role”, Mr Duncan Smith added. On Mr Shiplee’s recommendation, Neil Couling, who runs the nation’s jobcentres, would take over as “senior responsible officer” for universal credit, he said.
Mr Shiplee becomes the latest in a line of officials whose tenures at the top of the project have proved shortlived. They include Terry Moran, who retired last year after an extended period of sick leave, and Philip Langsdale, a renowned IT expert who died four months after taking overall charge of the programme.
Universal credit has undergone several big timetable revisions, due in part to IT problems. By April this year, under the original blueprint, around 1m people were due to be claiming UC but the actual figure was about 7,000.
But, in an apparent message to critics in both Westminster and Whitehall who have doubted it will ever be fully implemented, Mr Duncan Smith told the Conservative party conference: “I promise you we are going to finish what we started.”
Universal credit was “transforming the welfare state in Britain by tackling poverty and welfare dependency”, he said. When fully implemented, it had the potential to contribute up to £35bn to the economy over 10 years.
It had already been rolled out in the northwest of England and would be in more than one in eight jobcentres by Christmas.
Delivery would accelerate from the new year, and would reach “every single community across Great Britain” by 2015/16, he pledged. However, it will initially cover only new, single claimants, whose cases are the least complex.
Copyright © 2025 · All Rights Reserved · Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation
Warning: Undefined array key "User_id" in /home/irrvnet/public_html/forumalert/inc_footer.php on line 4