Agenda item

Report of the Executive Director, Resources

Cabinet Member received a report of the Executive Director, Resources, which contained performance information on the use of agency workers procured through the Master Vendor Contract for the Q3 period 1 October to 31 December 2013 and compared Q2 2013/14 with Q3 2013/14 expenditure.  Also included was information on Interim Manager spends for the same periods, which were now procured through National Framework Agreement RM692.

The Master Vendor contract was a planned strategy to work towards reducing the level of agency spends and to better understand where and how the Council used agency workers.  It required all agency workers to be ordered through Reed Recruitment (2 May 2011 to 1 December 2013) and through Pertemps, the newly appointed Master Vendor, from 2 December 2013.

It was acknowledged that current agency usage was still high because of the need to cover sickness absence, short-term cover, cover whilst fundamental service reviews were taking place and to cope with sudden surges of demand.

It was reported that overall spend had decreased, although there had been a rise in spend in the People Directorate, which reflected the increased requirement for experienced social workers to deal with higher workload being faced, particularly within the Referral and Assessment Service and in Children’s Social Care, due to the unprecedented rates of contacts at this time.  There was on-going recruitment to vacancies within Social Work with a view to reducing the need for agency workers in the longer term.

Agency spend on internally provided services had reduced, due in the main to managers successfully developing a relief pool of casual workers.  Care workers, who had expressed an interest in early retirement or had volunteered for redundancy in the abc review, were also being asked if they would be interested in working on a casual/relief basis at some point in the future.

Interim manager spend related to cover for senior Hay-graded jobs over £50,000 using the national framework agreement RM692 for non-permanent staff.  Prior to 1 December 2013 interim managers had been procured through the Council’s preferred supplier list.

Officers were questioned about the use of former employees to fill the vacancies and the relationship with the use of agency workers in terms of volume and cost.  Cabinet Member asked for the information to be included in the next quarter’s report to this meeting. 

RESOLVED that after due consideration of the report and matters raised at the meeting, the Cabinet Member (Strategic Finance and Resources):

1.  Approve monitoring processes to continue for both Agency workers and Interim Managers

2.  Endorse compliance with the corporate policy on the recruitment of Temporary Agency Workers through the Master Vendor, Reed Recruitment (for the period October to November and the new Master Vendor, Pertemps for the December period) and Interim managers.

3.  Instruct officers to continue to work towards reducing expenditure on the use of agency workers.

4.  Approve that future orders are not accepted if no reason is given for the need for the agency worker.

5.  Instruct officers to include in the report to the next meeting of Cabinet Member (Strategic Finance and Resources) the numbers of leavers used to fill vacancies and how this compares to the use of agency workers.