Minutes:
We seem to be losing staff, particularly in certain services such as waste collection, significantly faster than we are recruiting. I assume the shortfall is being made up with agency staff, rather than making the posts more attractive to encourage higher recruitment. Would the Portfolio Holder please tell us how much we have spent on agency staff this year, how that relates to what we would have paid permanent staff, and whether he feels this is value for money?
Councillor Simon Edwards, Portfolio Holder for Finance and Staffing, replied that his impressions were very similar in some ways, particularly in relation to sickness. He confirmed that sickness levels had gone up but was hopeful that by using the same methods as used in the past, this trend could be reversed.
In terms of staff turnover, Councillor Edwards commented that as an authority in the past there had been very low turnover, intentionally so. He recalled that some years ago the Single Status Agreement and associated job evaluations had resulted in a large number of staff taking a significant pay cut. The Council encouraged those members of staff to apply for more senior positions within the authority to get their salaries back up to where they were. This internal recruitment led to low levels of turnover. Councillor Edwards was of the view that this was the right thing to do at the time but the pendulum had now swing the other way. He commented that turnover was a good thing in that new blood brought in fresh ideas and new approaches. It was important to get the right balance. The Council’s turnover in 2016/17 was 12.7%, compared to an average turnover rate in the UK of 15%, although this varied a lot between industries. Councillor Edwards confirmed that Council’s turnover rate was a bit higher than he would like it, ideally he’d like to see it around 10%.
With reference to the use of agency staff, Councillor Edwards commented that the Council did use agency staff as this was necessary for it to be able to deliver essential services to its residents. Total spend on agency staff in 2016/17 was £328,000. The Waste Service had spent £270,000 on agency staff but had saved £263,000 on salaries, so the position was about break even. Given the need to deliver services, Councillor Edwards confirmed that he did feel this was value for money.
By way of a supplementary question, Councillor de Lacey commented that he was encouraged by the answer, but was not convinced that the way to get people better off was to promote them so they could have higher salaries. He had suggested to the Portfolio Holder that when the Council offered people a salary increase, instead of a percentage increase it should divvy up the pot between all employees equally. That would do a lot to address the disparity that is increasing in our society today between the better off and the worse off.
In response to the comment about internal promotion Councillor Edwards replied that that has been a specific response to a certain set of circumstances and was not a general policy that had been adopted. Referring to the statement about staff salaries, he declined to comment at this moment in time as he was due to begin talking to Unions about the pay increase for next year and would rather not have that discussion in this chamber.