CHAPTER 27: THE CALLER PROBLEM

Home visits Direct contact between the boards officials and applicants was, as explained in chapter 7, expected to take place almost entirely in applicants homes. It was assumed, therefore, that applicants would seldom need to visit the boards area office and that there was no need to provide waiting and interview rooms for large numbers of visitors. In the event, area offices received far more visitors than had been expected, creating what soon became known as the caller problem. It also became apparent that much of the time devoted to home visiting was unproductive and might be better spent dealing with callers at the office. In this chapter we show how the board responded to these pressures. Like other unemployed people, the boards applicants had to attend regularly at the employment exchange, from which they would obtain the application form for an allowance from the board. After returning the form to the exchange, they received a home visit from the boards investigating officer, on the basis of which their eligibility for an allowance was assessed, payment being made at the employment exchange. Once in payment, allowances were reviewed at regular intervals, each such review involving another home visit. The policy adopted at the outset was that, after an initial home visit, review visits should follow every four weeks, normally without warning, the element of surprise being regarded as important. New instructions on notification of visits were issued in April 1936, in the light of evidence that many of them, ranging from about 14 per cent in the Swansea district to 43 per cent in Liverpool, were abortive. The proportion of failed visits was generally higher in urban areas but the time wasted by each unsuccessful visit was greater in rural areas. The new instructions, therefore, authorised prior notification of review visits in rural areas, provided that at least one in four visits to an applicant was unannounced, with suitable modifications in the sequence of notified and surprise visits so as to preserve the element of uncertainty. No prior warning was to be given in cases where fraud was suspected. District officers in urban areas were invited to suggest classes of cases suitable for notified visits and, in June 1937, to reduce the number of callers at area offices, they were given discretion to make notification of urban visits the normal practice. Most district officers, however, disliked the idea and, where the policy of notification was adopted, it seemed to have little effect on the number of callers. Unannounced visits, therefore, remained the rule in urban areas.
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From the start, area offices were allowed to lengthen the interval between review visits from four to eight weeks where the household circumstances were stable, but there were wide variations in the use of
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this discretion: in six out of 27 districts it was hardly used at all. In January 1939, the board agreed as an experiment to extend the normal interval to eight weeks in straightforward cases; but the instructions listed no less than eighteen categories of cases which were to remain subject to four-weekly review. Some of these were selected by character, including cases of thriftlessness, suspected fraud, special difficulty or child neglect, and migrants. Others were selected by constitution of household: large families, expectant mothers, women with dependants, single persons under 30 and households with three or more unemployed applicants or where a member had left home. A third group to be reviewed every four weeks comprised those receiving temporary discretionary additions (e.g. for extra nourishment) or subject to the wage stop. Elderly applicants, on the other hand - defined as aged 50 or over - were to be reviewed only every twelve weeks, unless they fell into one of the four-week categories.
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Despite these changes, which greatly reduced the number of home visits which investigating officers were required to make, the boards organisational structure continued to reflect the assumption that the normal point of contact with applicants was in their homes. But that assumption was increasingly at odds with reality. The caller problem The cuts resulting from the 1934 regulations ensured that, from the start, there would be many visits to area offices by angry and perplexed applicants whose problems could not be resolved at the employment exchanges. With these initial difficulties at least temporarily resolved by the standstill, a more stable situation was reached, but the number of callers remained substantial. An enquiry in September 1935 showed that in one week about 37,000 callers were received, about 5.5 per cent of the live load. There were striking differences between offices, even within the same district, but at that stage the general position was considered to give no cause for apprehension. Recognition of a serious problem followed the widening of the boards scope on 1 April 1937. The introduction of the new regulations in November 1936 had led to a temporary increase in callers, but the numbers had fallen in December and risen only slightly in the first quarter of 1937, to a weekly average of about 36,000. April saw a steep rise to 52,811 per week (nearly 7.9 per cent of the live load). The numbers were expected to fall again as the new intake of applicants became familiar with the boards procedures. This time, however, the fall failed to occur: indeed, the numbers continued to rise, reaching nearly 72,000 in November 1937 and about 83,500 (nearly 15 per cent of the live load) a year later.
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The growth in the number of callers had a number of causes. The most obvious was that, from April 1937, the board could accept applications for supplementation of insurance benefit and for payment of allowances during the benefit waiting days. The deterrent procedures adopted in these cases, described in chapter 20, involved at least one and often
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more than one visit to the area office and, although the number of payments was relatively small, there were many more unsuccessful applications which added to the number of callers. Other factors which may have contributed to the caller problem included the introduction of winter allowances in 1937, the growing use of the power to make payments in kind and the trend towards tougher treatment of the workshy and those refusing offers of training. In some areas, local policies and procedures resulted in more callers. For example, applicants were sometimes encouraged to report changes of circumstances direct to the area office instead of through the employment exchange, and one Liverpool area office adopted a policy of interviewing all new applicants at the office, home visits being made later if at all. More generally, greater familiarity with the boards offices and their staff may have encouraged callers. This factor was presented in a positive light in a memorandum on the caller problem written in 1938:
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Signs soon became apparent that the traditions and experiences of the old days of transitional payments were gradually fading and that confidence between officer and applicant in the new service was being steadily established. This led to two results: the first a growing inclination on the part of applicants to call at the offices to seek advice; the second a very marked tendency for applicants to call to notify frankly and promptly changes of circumstances of a kind hitherto but grudgingly and tardily revealed because of fear of consequences.
10

A less positive but perhaps more plausible explanation is that applicants were becoming increasingly aware that, when problems arose in connection with their allowances, leaving them and their families temporarily destitute, a visit to the area office was the only effective way of getting something done, even if it meant a long wait in unpleasant conditions. Conditions in area offices That the conditions were unpleasant, especially at the end of the week when applicants who, for whatever reason, had not received a full weeks money from the employment exchange descended in large numbers on the area office, was an inevitable consequence of the fact that the offices were not purpose-built and had not been designed to accommodate callers. As the 1938 memorandum quoted above recalled: It was foreseen that in certain places, such as Hull, Liverpool and the London Docks Areas, where there is a good deal of casual employment, and in cities having a highly concentrated and relatively active industrial population, such as Manchester, Glasgow and Sheffield, the number of callers would inevitably be relatively high, and due regard was paid to such local factors as these when the lay-out of premises was being considered. Generally speaking, however, accommodation for callers was
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regarded as of somewhat secondary importance and it was not infrequently limited to whatever space was left after the requirements of staff and equipment had been met. Wherever possible, however, a separate waiting room was scheduled.
11

Even waiting rooms were in practice often lacking, as a report by a regional officer, Osmond, on four Liverpool offices showed in June 1937 (the emphasis placed on segregation of visitors by both race and sex was not unusual). At one office he found the premises inadequate for present staff and entirely insufficient for callers and necessary interviews. There is no colour problem, but there is difficulty in separating the men and women. ... One of the applicants to whom I spoke at 11.45 had been waiting since 9 oclock. Women were sitting in a draughty porch. At another, he wrote, The premises are dreadful. They are so inadequate that the AO has to share his room with four other people ... The waiting room accommodation is very bad. Black and white are in one room, and there is no separation of sexes. ... Applicants in the waiting room to whom the DO and I spoke complained bitterly about delay. One said he had come at 9 oclock, gone off to the Exchange to sign at 11, returned to the Area Office, went to dinner at 12.30 and was now back again, still hoping. There were plans to move this office, which shared a building with another area office (the one mentioned above where all new applicants were required to attend for interview), of which Osmond wrote: The waiting room is in a sub-basement, dark, shabby and dreary, and to see considerable numbers crowded in such a place with nothing to do but to wait was to me a sad sight.
12

Eighteen months later, Osmond revisited this office, where office interviews of new applicants were still the norm despite instructions to the contrary, and found callers on every floor and almost outside every room.
13

Some of the worst conditions were in London, where the number of callers (a barely credible 28.5 per cent of the live register in one week of October 1938) was twice the national average. Middleton Smith described the state of the Borough office in central London early in 1938: ... there were 230 callers on the Friday of our visit. The great majority of these callers wait over 4 hours in the Area Office and some few of the cases we interviewed had waited for as long as 6 hours. Partly because of this delay the office accommodation is taxed to the utmost to hold the callers and it is necessary to hold interviews in the presence of waiting applicants. Only one-third or so of the callers can be provided with chairs and some applicants reach a state of physical exhaustion before they leave the office.

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While I was in the office one woman applicant fainted and had to be brought round with smelling salts. Such conditions impose an undue strain on the staff and on the tempers of applicants and it can only be a matter of time before a volume of public criticism arises over our treatment of callers.
14

Although several London offices were relocated, the new premises were not purpose-built and were often converted houses. The Camden Town office moved in 1937 to a house in a residential district (24 Highbury Crescent) - the best the Office of Works could find after a years search. The area officer urged that special attention be given in the new premises to interviewing and waiting rooms. Callers, he wrote, ranged from ex-professional men and women, clerks, typists, etc., to undesirable characters some of whom have served several terms of imprisonment, and who are not particular as regards their actions and language in the presence of other callers. At the same time, the number of women callers has considerably increased and many of them bring young children in perambulators and in arms with them. He wanted separate rooms for the three interviewing clerks and separate waiting rooms for those awaiting interviews, those awaiting payment orders, food vouchers, etc., and women. Basement rooms, he added, should be avoided as far as possible. These aspirations, however, proved to be beyond the capacity of the building. In a parliamentary question 18 months later, William Gallacher complained of applicants at the Camden Town office having to wait upwards of four hours on two successive days to receive food vouchers and asked Brown whether, in view of the danger to health caused by standing for such long periods in a confined basement in bad air, he would have enquiries made with a view to reducing the waiting period and providing an airier and more commodious waiting room with more seats. Brown replied that steps were being taken to improve the position including the transfer of a substantial number of applicants to a new office near Euston and an improvement in seating arrangements.
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Easing the pressures Towards the end of 1938 a high level committee of officials on London problems was set up. Its terms of reference covered 19 offices in the London area, including suburban areas such as Croydon and Wimbledon. A memorandum prepared for the committee by Mary Darlow identified a number of factors contributing to their problems. They included the number of migrants arriving from other districts in search of work and often in urgent need; the number of undesirable applicants in areas such as Camden Town - coloured men of doubtful reputations and the lower end of the dance band, dance hall fraternity, and other hangers-on, both men and women, to the luxury trades resulting in an abnormal amount of fraud; the amount of casual and
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short-term employment, resulting in a rapid turnover of applicants (at Edgware Road, the office with the highest turnover, new and repeat applications during the year were over ten times the live register, compared with Dowlais in south Wales where applications were only four-fifths of the register); and the fact that, since work was relatively plentiful in London, stationary cases (applicants failing to find work over long periods) aroused more concern than in the depressed areas. The boards relations with other organisations added to the pressures, in the form of both demands for co-operation with Londons highly organized network of social and benevolent organizations and the activities of bodies such as the NUWM which created a fair amount of disturbance in Area Offices, both individually and in groups. The fact that the available jobs were often far from applicants homes made fraud more tempting and harder to detect. The outstanding feature of the boards work in London, however, in Miss Darlows view, was the problem of high rents. Payments for rents above the limits set by the local advisory committees had to be specially approved at either area or district office level; high rents created wage stop problems and resulted in both waiting day and supplementation applications; and the additional investigation required in high rent cases caused further delays.
17

Most, if not all, of these characteristics of the London scene contributed to the caller problem, if only by making assessment more complicated and thus increasing the potential for delays, errors and misunderstandings. About half the urgent applications in the whole country, the committee was told, were received in London, and they accounted for about half the total number of applications in London. They included waiting day and supplementation cases, migrants and applicants whose benefit had been suspended, disallowed, reduced or delayed. The difficulties were exacerbated by the high proportion of cases involving completion of form B.71 (the deterrent form whose use was described in chapter 20) at the area office. There is no doubt, Miss Darlow wrote, that in many cases the reception of callers on pay days in London offices is a nerve racking experience both for applicants and staff.
18

A number of proposals had already been made to improve the situation. In March 1937, when it was assumed that the problems associated with the second appointed day would be of relatively short duration, a circular was sent to district officers suggesting an appointments system for completion of form B.71, use of staff rooms, rest rooms and tribunal rooms for interviewing, suspension of some routine work, and the loan of staff from district offices where necessary. In July 1937, area offices were given new instructions aimed at simplifying the B.71 procedure and reducing the number of journeys between the exchange and the area office in cases of urgent need. Another district office circular, in June 1937, proposed a number of measures for adoption if the need arose: in particular, closing the office doors an hour before the end of the working day, or - provided the district officer was tolerably well satisfied that there would be no public outcry - restricting interviews to
19 20

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the periods from 10 a.m. to noon and 2 to 4 p.m. Callers, it was suggested, should be seen first by the office messenger (if any) or an investigating clerk who would ensure, if a further interview seemed necessary, that the case papers were available. Where there was no separate waiting room for women, they could be seen out of turn.
21

Further guidance was issued in December 1938 to offices with a substantial B.71 caller problem, particularly those where dislocation of normal work and long periods of waiting by callers are now regular features. Applicants calling to notify a change of circumstances or make a simple enquiry were to be dealt with by a receptionist. Those with enough money to meet their immediate needs could be asked to call back at a less busy time. Other callers, if numerous, were to be divided into fast and slow streams. Every effort was to be made to deal with morning callers before the dinner break, failing which the office could be kept open during the dinner hour, at least to the extent of allowing people to wait under cover. The needs of women callers were again stressed: For a woman caller ... lengthy waiting often involves hardship through the neglect of household duties. Priority for women callers should therefore be considered and especially for elderly women and women accompanied by children. A woman officer, where available, was to interview all women callers, or at least those needing special handling.
22

While the guidance from headquarters focused on ways of reducing delays and improving the service provided to callers, the solutions adopted by area offices were mainly negative and deterrent: sending applicants away without taking a formal application, meeting only their immediate needs, and paying allowances in the form of food vouchers or of accommodation vouchers for single men. An obvious way of reducing the number of callers would have been to abandon the deliberately cumbersome B.71 procedure and allow waiting day and supplementation applications to be made in the normal way at the employment exchange. The London committee was told that this was, in fact, being done experimentally in some areas but that, when the possibility of extending the practice had been discussed, it had been decided that it was too dangerous and could only be adopted as a last resort in a limited class of case.
23

By 1939, therefore, little progress had been made towards a solution of the caller problem. London had not benefited to the same extent as other districts from the fall in unemployment and the pressure on area offices was temporarily increased by the boards new responsibilities relating to the Prevention and Relief of Distress scheme and service dependants allowances. The boards 1939 annual report cited one London office where 525 callers had to be dealt with in one day, and it was not uncommon for 200 callers to present themselves in the course of an hour.
24

The legacy of inadequate and unsuitable offices was inherited in 1940 by the Assistance Board and remained to be dealt with in the post-war
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years. Meanwhile, only makeshift solutions were possible. As the author of a 1941 Fabian Society pamphlet wrote: The Boards staff are often badly accommodated. They are housed in old schools, disused halls, and former private houses. Clients are often crowded and uncomfortable when waiting, and it is geographically impossible in some offices to give privacy for interviews. This is being overcome to some extent by the provision of wooden divisions fixed to the tables. The client sits screened from the next client, while the interviewers sit across the table in a long row unscreened. This is better than nothing, but private cubicles should be provided, and people should never have to wait in draughty passages or stone basements.
25

Reinventing the dole: a history of the Unemployment Assistance Board 1934-1940 by Tony Lynes is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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