Agenda item

Cabinet received the Overview and Scrutiny report and recommendations and will respond in due course.

Councillor Garlick commented that the report had been well received by Overview and Scrutiny and commended it to Cabinet.  Councillor Clarke presented the report and commented that it was non-political in that it provided a snapshot over a long period of time.  He commented that there was still some confusion as to what was meant by “agency staff” used to cover for periods of sickness and holiday and “consultants” who were engaged for a specific purpose for their professional expertise.  Overview and Scrutiny were concerned that there was no central record of how many agency staff or consultants were engaged at any one time and for what purpose.  It was noted that the Council would appear to have contradictory policies to reduce the numbers of agency staff to save money.  However, in the manual worker situation, agency staff were engaged to save money over the cost of full time employees.  Councillor Clarke commented that he did not support situations where agency arrangements were in effect sub-contracted which led to people queuing for work at Westbridge Depot and then being turned away when the opportunities had been filled.  He believed this was not good for the Council’s reputation and took away the scope for the Council to provide apprenticeships and other types of training schemes; and also for the Council to help bring people away from unemployment.  He also believed that the Council was not making sufficient use of student expertise from the university and he referred to the recommendations set out in the report.

The breadth of Overview and Scrutiny’s review was welcomed and comment was made in respect of misleading press coverage about money being wasted on agency staff and consultants.  It was clear from the report that these people had largely been doing the same work as the Council’s own employees and therefore this was valuable and not a waste.

Councillor Clarke commented that the review had uncovered some occasions when consultants had been engaged but the reasons for their engagement were unclear.  Sometimes the handover when their work had been completed was also unclear leading to it not being progressed.  He queried the need for the Joint Planning Unit when the Council had its own planners and noted that two consultants had been engaged on one particular topic and had come to two different sets of conclusions.  He also acknowledged that in terms of having a floating pool of staff that some areas such as lifeguards required specialist qualification but also noted that in the case of picking up leaves on either highways, leisure or housing land that it made sense for the Council to have a “hit squad” that could deal with issues immediately and the land ownership issues could be resolved later.

The Chair thanked Overview and Scrutiny for their work and their recommendations and commented that the Director of Planning and Regeneration would clarify to Councillor Clarke the use of consultants in the circumstance that he described.  He also noted the Council’s existing work and support for NEL and observed that the Council currently had 29 individuals on Jobseeker’s Allowance working for it.

RESOLVED:         That the report and recommendations be received and a response made in due course.