Leicester City Council slashes bill for consultants and agency staff
Leicester City Council has almost halved its bill for consultants and agency staff during the past 12 months.
City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby promised when elected last May to cut the council's "excessive" spending on temporary and agency staff.
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In 2010/11, the authority paid out £14 million on agency staff and £10 million on consultants.
However, during the past financial year those totals have been cut to £9 million and £4million respectively.
Deputy mayor Rory Palmer, who was tasked with monitoring the council's spending on outside workers, said he was happy with the reduction.
He said: "For several years, the council's spending on agency workers and consultants has been incredibly high.
"It has been one of our priorities to dramatically cut that cost.
"In some cases, we hadn't been making enough use of the expertise of our existing employees, which is why our managers now have to make a strong case to bring in temporary staff before permission will be given."
Consultants are usually well-paid and advise staff on specific projects, while agency staff are mainly used to cover staff shortages.
The biggest overall reductions were found in the council's property, learning services and highways and regeneration divisions. These accounted for 39 per cent of the total reduction.
In the learning services division, the council says it has cut the rates paid to temporary workers, for example.
Meanwhile, working arrangements in the highways division have been made more flexible so that existing staff can carry out work which would have been traditionally carried out by agency workers.
Gary Garner, Leicester branch secretary for the public sector union Unison, said: "The council's bill for agency workers has been too high for years, and we've been pushing for it to come down for a long time.
"The reduction over the past year has been massive, and we've got to give the council a lot of credit for that."
He added: "Obviously, there are still cases where the use of agency staff is essential. For example, if there's a temporary staff shortage at a care home through sickness then you can't just go without – you have to bring someone else in."
A promise to reduce spending on consultants was contained in mayor Sir Peter Soulsby's list of 100 pledges for his first 100 days in office, though his predecessor as council leader, Veejay Patel, began the process in 2010.
A spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance said the reduction was "fantastic", and urged the council to continue to cut the cost.
8 Comments
by lissabeth
Friday, February 03 2012, 10:34PM
“amazing this......s t u r d e e road !”
by intrest
Friday, February 03 2012, 9:15PM
“..in reply..the transfer of housing ownership is a legal one..where if each council agreed..council housing stock could be transferred as one conveyance.The tenants of council properties legally have a percentage of say-so..which under agreements ideally would remain unchanged.No difference..no problem there.This is how legal ownership and transfer of ownership works.A good legal department conveys and ensures all said agreements are met.The legal difference is that the rent levied on such properties would then be determined by the government-"the new owners".This could then be waived legally..and thus save on the housing benefit bill.As a pilot scheme this could work for at least one year.”
by disident2
Friday, February 03 2012, 8:20PM
“We employ Council employees who are paid well to know their jobs. If they have to call in consultants then they are not fit for the job. Then they are reducing staff about a thousand I think was quoted, if they can do without all these people now, what have they been doing? It is like housing repairs hundreds of contractors flying about at what cost, what happened to the cheaper in house council staff? Surely this needs looking into.”
by martin_le3
Friday, February 03 2012, 8:03PM
“@intrest - do you not think that the administrative hassle of transferring ownership of council properties for one year, combined with the facts that lots of people get housing benefit and dont live in council houses, and lots of people live in council houses and don't get housing benefit, means that your idea is extremely impractical?”
by intrest
Friday, February 03 2012, 7:39PM
“..to add a comment...the reductions we see here are configured to reduce the national debt..no problem with that.The most expensive spend however for the government is that of housing benefit.If all councils agreed to transfer ownership of council housing to the government..for just one year under agreements..the saving in housing benefit would in-turn reduce the need for such local government reductions as we see here in the article.Council-tax payments could then determine by default the actual affordable future budget spend of said local councils.”
by jonger
Friday, February 03 2012, 2:18PM
“Consultants are merely report writers, they come into the organisation go round and get all the required information from the staff that work there (disrupting them in the process) then put it in a fancy report with their headings and charge a fat fee for it by claiming they have produced it, when the existing employees have provided all the information.”
by Reg999
Friday, February 03 2012, 2:16PM
“The County Council are doing the reverse and using more consultants than ever so these leeches won't be off the gravy train for long.”
by Markymark002
Friday, February 03 2012, 1:26PM
“And nobody even noticed. So what will happen to the staff who used to contract them when we now know they weren't necessary?”