Agenda item

Roger Parkin, Director of Customer and Community Services, introduced a report on temporary Agency Staffing, the key points of which were:

Figures for the first 3 quarters of the 2015 financial year (April–December 2015), showed the total invoiced spend on agency staff was £8,780,406 . This was slightly £500,000 above the £7,826,799 pend for the same period in 2014. Spend by Directorate had been requested at the previous E&A meeting, however it had proven more difficult to split the cots form the Children’s Trust than anticipated. This data would be brought to the Committee in a report to the next meeting.

There were 171 staff placements across the Council, with the highest number being within the Wellbeing Directorate. Partly, this was due to the difficulty in recruiting to certain posts e.g. social workers. In other cases, this was due to deliberately not recruiting permanent staff in order to provide flexibility for internal redeployments following staff redundancies, or recruiting staff on a short-term basis to complete short-term projects.

Members were informed that the Matrix contract was coming to an end, and whist it was felt that the contract had provided transparency over agency spend, and provided a measure of governance and control that was previously absent, further internal discussions would need be held to determine whether it had met expectations and provided value for money.

Members were concerned at the tenure of certain agency workers, with particular reference to those workers who had been in employment for 40 weeks to 2 years. It was confirmed that the OD & HR teams had begun an in-depth review to determine the reasons for this length of tenure and reduce as appropriate. .

A question was raised regarding whether any permanent staff had converted to agency staff, in the interest of receiving higher pay. It was confirmed that SBC staff received pay parity with agency staff, though staff could not be prevented in becoming agency staff if that was what they wished (for example, due to increased flexibility).

Resolved -   (a) That the report be noted.

(b) That a further report be brought to the next meeting of the Employment & Appeals Committee.