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Openreach: Duty of Care

2 October 2007

The CWU has been discussing with Openreach proposals for a replacement of the current Duty of Care systems; UTEL used in BT Wholesale and fastDOC used in BT Retail Field Services. The intention is to have one unified system.

There is a concern that with some 400 instances each night of people failing to sign off, someone genuinely in need will not be picked up. Additionally there is a significant minority in Openreach who have no suitable Duty of Care process. A new process has been developed that allows individuals to change the level of cover dependent on risk assessment.

The Executive team had concerns with the original proposal which was to default everyone to Category "0" or "1" (the lower risk) and only increase that Category on demand from the individual. It has now been agreed that a default category level of "0" or "1" can only be set following a discussion between the individual and the line manager.

The intention is to run a pilot in the Oxford/Heathrow patches, there will be more information when it is available.