Agenda item

The Committee considered a report detailing the Council’s spend on temporary agency staff contracts via Matrix. 

The Service Lead Governance apologised to the Committee that the information requested at the previous meeting had been omitted from the report.  He assured Members that the requested information would be provided in the report presented at the next meeting in October 2019.

Members were advised that the Council’s spend on interims, as identified from the Matrix spend report between 1^st April and 31^st May 2019 was £1,515,343.  Spend through the Council’s Agresso payments system for the same period was £381,427.  There were currently 270 interims employed and this represented an increase of 20 from the figure previously reported to the Committee in April 2019.  It was noted that the Full Time Equivalent details had been included in the report, however as this was calculated on hours and timesheets, the data was incomplete.  Members were advised that fuller details would be provided in the report at the next meeting.

The OD/HR Business Partner explained that there were two categories of interim: project workers and cover roles.  Project workers were often used to provide specialist skills for time limited contracts and tended to be on higher contract rates.  Cover role interims were used where there was a resource need and it had proved difficult to attract suitable qualified people to the role.  The aim was to convert cover roles to permanent employees. 

There was some discussion in relation to spend for both Matrix and ‘off contract’ spends.  The Matrix contract had been successful in controlling and improving governance around departmental engagement of agency staff and in reducing maverick spend.  However, the introduction of identified ‘off-contract’ spend gave a picture of increasing costs.  Spend for both Matrix and ‘off-contract’ for the financial year (18/19) totalled £13.4 million.  Members were advised that work with the Finance department would continue to ensure that coding to agency and consultant cost codes were accurate.  Spend outside the Matrix arrangement would continue to be monitored and challenged to ensure placements were in accordance with the Council’s Constitution.

Resolved –

(a)  That the report be noted.

(b)  That the report to the next meeting of the Committee include:

·  A breakdown of figures for interims employed to work on special projects as opposed to backfilling vacancies.

·  Information on identifying whether sufficiently robust procedures were in place to end contracts once work was completed.

·  A cost comparison/consideration between having interims versus employing a member of staff.

·  Information on /progress made on establishing a ‘pool’ of administrators across the Council.

·  Figures previously reported to the Committee be provided to allow Members to identify trends.

·  The dashboard data and figures presented in Appendix 1 of the report be accompanied by commentary to enable Members to fully understand and scrutinise the information provided.