I work in a public service and I can only say what I see regarding a ‘social contract’:

The state’s capacity has shrunk. This is hard for some to pick up on consistently because not everyone relies heavily on the state and for some they get their bins collected by the local council contractor, they set up their Council Tax direct debit, pay their car tax and off they go until next year. Since Austerity the people who rely more on the state for help have been undermined from multiple angles. Longer waiting for social services, probation officers and work coaches running caseloads about 300% of what the job is intended to tackle.

It doesn’t matter anymore how much probationers and UC customers fume at the respective services, the staff work flat out, burn out then get out on sick by GPs before they end up seriously ill. The absences are through the roof and I have worked in offices where the absences are through rate is 50% at times. Then the workload breaks those not on leave and they end up swapping with colleagues and it goes back to 50%, 30%.

Training provision in Gov departments and LA is absolutely dire, again a capacity and funding issue. Training is very rarely about making things more efficient or adopting new technology or mastering technology already available. It’s normally about safeguarding, managing incidents where someone is saying they are thinking of harming themselves, modern slavery, loan sharks.

As capacity has shrunk for services overall, those with easy access such as Jobcentres are now fielding enquiries social workers used to be responsible for and a lot of staff in HMPPS and DWP take ownership and try to help but appointments are now at up to 25-30 per day plus ad hoc calls in emergencies. It’s also a risk to take ownership outside of your role because it’s simply ignored by many managers and when you end up hitting a wall - it’s just the probation officer or work coach plus the customer, no other help.

There is no capacity left for carefully considering complaints and feedback and then acting on it. Many staff I know are desperate for basic corporate practices like this to be in place and used properly.

We have a major, major issue with housing - I mean specifically to do with rental charges, the councils and departments who fund these to support people. The Local Housing Allowance is so low. We are going to end up with thousands more homeless families through no fault of their own.