B*ll*cks. PVR Rates are RATES and are not based on total numbers.
A rate of 5% means 5 out of 100, 50 out of 1000 and 2000 out of 40000.
A reason why rates might go down is the wait and see for the redundancy package. Better to be paid to go.
It would be interesting to compare PVR rates of this in the bracket with those not in the bracket. Of course that might provide some uncomfortable facts so better to fudge the statistics.
Needs someone to put in an FOI request.