Agenda item

The Chairman welcomed the Lead Councillor for Resources and the Senior Specialist Procurement. 

The Lead Councillor for Resources introduced the item, advising the meeting that the amount spent by the Council on consultants and agency workers over the last five years was £24.5 million on consultants and £11.97 million on agency workers.  He advised the meeting that consultants were generally engaged without a formal procurement or governance process.  In addition, he advised that half of agency workers were not obtained through the Council’s temporary staffing contract with Comensura, rather service managers were going off contract to obtain the workers they require.  The Lead Councillor for Resources confirmed that there was an agency worker spend of £3.6 million on Fleet and Waste Management over the previous five years.

The Lead Councillor for Resources praised the proposed introduction of the procurement strategy into the process of managing spend on consultants and agency workers. 

The Senior Specialist Procurement confirmed that the report was produced at the request of the Committee and she summarised its findings to the meeting.  She indicated that while consultants on the Council’s larger projects were engaged as part of a governance process involving a proposed business case, generally they were engaged on a more ad hoc basis for other areas of work across the organisation. 

The Senior Specialist Procurement advised that opportunities for consultants spend identified in the report included looking to deliver work in-house where possible and improve cost control and options evaluation through new governance arrangements.  In relation to opportunities to improve contracting agency workers, the Committee was advised of a relaunch of the Comensura contract and minimising off-contract spend by requiring a procurement exemption if another recruitment agency was to be engaged.  The Senior Specialist Procurement suggested a reliance on agency staff could be expected to decline as the Council’s Future Guildford transformation programme was completed.

In reply to a question from a Committee member, the meeting was advised that direct employee expenditure was £38.1 million [for 2019/20].  In addition, the Committee confirmed that the total spend on consultants and agency workers over the past five years was £36.5 million rather than £34.69 million.  Members of the Committee suggested that spending an average of approximately twenty per cent of the Council’s staffing budget on consultants and agency staff each year was excessive. 

Members of the Committee highlighted the Council’s apparent reliance on agency workers to provide frontline services such as waste management and suggested it would be preferable to employ workers directly.  The Director of Resources outlined the need for a bank of staff able to undertake waste management duties.  The Managing Director stated that the use of agency staff for fleet and waste management services was done in an appropriate and responsible way.  The Lead Councillor for Resources stated that such information within the report might usefully challenge long established practices.

The Lead Councillor for Community reminded a Committee member of the importance of refuse collection keyworkers.  In response, the Committee member concerned apologised and clarified his earlier remarks.

The Committee members indicated that it was difficult to evaluate value for money of the spend from the limited, high-level information within the report and suggested a year on year breakdown of spend by department, greater analysis, and a comparison with equivalent local authorities was required.  In reply, the Lead Councillor for Resources advised the report was an overview that identified areas for further analysis.  The Senior Specialist Procurement indicated that the report had intended to bring the Committee the summary scope and spend on consultants and agency staff over the past five years.  She confirmed that the breakdown of spend by department could be made available to the Committee but suggested that recommendations to better control future spending should be more of a focus.  The Director of Resources indicated that Committee members needed more information to better understand the different contexts of the Council’s five-year spend on consultants and agency staff. 

Questioned why the Council renewed the contract with Comensura, the Senior Specialist Procurement indicated that  a compliant procurement process was undertaken with a further direct award to Comensura due to the amount of substantial business improvement changes occurring in the Council and the risk of too much change and a lack of buy in to a new way of recruiting temporary staff. The Senior Specialist Procurement indicated that a contract re-launch was planned for when Future Guildford Phase B had concluded to bring hiring managers to the central corporate contract and offer training and support to be able to use the contract as a first port of call for temporary workers with the primary goal of reducing off-contract spend and thereby increasing compliance and making savings.  A member of the Committee suggested the issue of Comensura’s contract renewal might have been considered by an Executive Advisory Board.

The Senior Specialist Procurement advised the meeting that consultants’ insurances, including professional indemnity insurance, would apply only if a contract was in place.

RESOLVED:  (I) That the Executive and the Corporate Management Team be requested to consider the options to better control costs and provide a more robust governance approach to spend on consultants and agency workers as outlined in the report submitted to the Committee; and

(II)  That the Committee be provided with an interim update on consultants and agency worker spend in six months’ time and with a full report of progress achieved in this spend area in one year.