Agenda item

To consider the annual report by the Assistant Director (Finance and Resources) detailing expenditure on consultants, hired and temporary staff.

The Panel considered the annual report by the Assistant Director (Finance and Resources) containing details of expenditure by the Council on consultants, hired and temporary staff. Members were reminded that the Cabinet had asked the Employment Panel to review the use of consultants and agency staff as part of their deliberations on the Panel’s proposals for budgetary savings. With this in mind, it was proposed that the Panel’s comments on the report should be conveyed to the Employment Panel who would consider any changes to Council policy as part of their new terms of reference.

Having noted that revenue expenditure in this area had increased significantly in 2012/13 in comparison with the preceding year, Members considered a number of aspects of the report. They were advised that all staffing costs had to be met from an overall staffing budget and that the number of consultants, hired and temporary staff would fluctuate depending on the schemes or initiatives which were being pursued in a particular year or the availability of additional funding to employ such staff. The Operations Division required the flexibility that hired and temporary staff provided to meet the needs of this service. The Assistant Director (Finance and Resources) then agreed to provide Members with further details of the £77k spent on investigations in the Corporate Office.

In response to a question by a Member, the Panel was assured that it was unlikely that a consultant would become a permanent member of the establishment as they tended to be used for one off projects. Temporary staff might be employed on a short term basis to enable consideration to be given to more permanent staffing arrangements or to reflect the fact that additional Government funding had been made available to meet particular requirements, for example the Benefits caseload.

Members then enquired about the mechanisms which were in place to review the use of hired staff and were advised that there was an onus on Heads of Service to manage their staffing budgets to avoid creating financial pressures in other areas. Reference having been made to a specific instance in which a member of hired staff had been retained for a prolonged period, the Head of Customer Services assured the Panel that she had recently reviewed the position and found that the post was funded by the Government.

Having noted a suggestion that in future it might be useful to identify those instances where the appointment of temporary staff had been necessary to keep the service going, Members discussed the levels of stress related absence within the organisation and noted that the Employment Panel was monitoring this issue. The employment of temporary staff was one of the tools used to deal with this problem.

On the understanding that any future reviews in this area would be undertaken by the Employment Panel, that Panel was requested to consider:-

v  the mechanisms by which the employment of temporary, hired and agency staff were reviewed to ensure that they were cost effective;

v  the impact of stress related absence on the appointment of these staff; and

v  whether there was an opportunity to reduce revenue expenditure in this respect for the forthcoming year.

Whereupon, it was

RESOLVED

(a)  that the contents of the report be noted;  and

(b)  the Panel’s comments be conveyed to the Employment Panel for further consideration.