Union slams council over£2.3m agency spend

TOWN Hall union Unison has slammed Warrington Borough Council for spending about £2.3 million on temporary agency workers at the same time as making permanent employees redundant.
Unison joint branch secretary Jason Horan said the figures relating to agency workers within the operations directorate, which manages the refuse collection service, were “outrageously high” with a projected end-of-year spend of £500,000.
He said: “In the current climate of budget pressures this is totally unacceptable and it also places a big question on how management are managing the service.”
Mr Horan said recent data showed that the families and wellbeing directorate had a similar projected end-of-year spend of £500,000, due to a shortage of social workers and support workers.
“We have grave concerns that the council’s controlling Labour group has sanctioned cuts without properly thinking through the implications and left officers to reduce permanent posts at their own discretion.”
Mr Horan said the council had attempted to defend the figures by saying the agency spend had been drastically reduced since 2010 when the unions first raised the issue.
But over the last two years agency spend had levelled out and actually increased this year in certain areas of the council.
This did not comply with a commitment previously given by council officers to reduce agency spend year on year.
“It is disgraceful Warrington Borough Council is wasting so much of its budget on hiring agency workers.
“What makes it so sickening is that the council has been paying redundancy payments to get rid of its own staff yet continuing to employ temporary staff.
“It is about time that Labour got a grip of budgets and stopped using council tax payer’s money to line the pockets of the job agencies that are used to bring in the temporary staff to deliver the work that should be done by permanent employees.
“It is immoral to continue to employ such a high number of agency staff when the council is continuing to reduce permanent posts year on year.”
A council spokesperson said: “As a council, we spent a total of £2.3 million on agency staff in the year ending March 31. This is a reduction on last year and represents a continuing downward spend on agency costs, as well as being a very small percentage of our total pay bill.
“We actively seek to reduce agency costs wherever possible, however, the majority of these workers are used not to fill permanent posts on an ongoing basis, but rather to cover maternity leave, annual leave, sick leave and to cover vacant posts whilst we are recruiting to them.
“In terms of social workers, Warrington performs extremely well in managing to recruit and retain permanent staff, in contrast to many other councils. However, it is vital for our most vulnerable residents that when there is sickness or maternity leave, or staff move elsewhere, that we ensure we continue to provide safe services, and this does necessitate the use of some agency staff.
“Mr Horan recently raised his concerns on this matter with the council’s joint consultative committee, and the council committed there and then to working with trade unions to see what else we could do to address his concerns including a meeting with the chief executive to fully explore the issue. Indeed we look forward to this next step and to further exploring the matter.”