Thanet council spent £242,913 on agency staff during the first three months of this year.
The spend is revealed in supplier data showing fees paid out of £500 and over which local authorities are required to publish under the Local Government Transparency Code 2015.
The majority of the spend was by operational services, which is in charges of areas such as bin collections and street cleaning, parking and cemeteries.
Agency staff from Hr Go (Kent) Ltd were used for roles including the unloading of car shipments at Ramsgate Port, costing a total of £159,877.
A four-year contract with the agency ends next year.
A spend of £75,013 was made on agency staff from Oyster Partnership, which is a Recruitment agency specialising in Property across the Public and Private sector; Sellick Partnership which specialises in professional services across areas including HR, legal, procurement and property; Vector Resourcing Ltd for technology recruitment; Reed Specialist Recruitment Ltd and R S S (Wessex) Limited -trading as Rubicon- with roles across trades.
RSS (Wessex) Ltd spend came under operational services – as did HRGO- with the other agencies listed for department corporate governance, the chief executive (Reed Specialists) and East Kent Shared Services (Vector)
A further £8023 was spent on agency staff – again for operational services – from construction recruitment from ohuk ltd.
Contract
A Thanet council spokesperson said: “Thanet District Council has a four year, temporary agency framework contract with HRGO Plc, that ends in April 2020.
“Under this contract, HRGO is responsible for supplying a daily staff provision service from 5:30am in order ensure that we can cover the statutory services we have to deliver.
“Agency workers are provided when our permanent staff are away from work for a number of reasons, such as holiday, sickness or attending statutory training e.g. Manual Handling.
“The contract provides cover as needed for statutory frontline posts i.e. Refuse loaders, HGV drivers, 3.5T and 7.5T drivers and cleansing operatives.”
Efficiences
The authority concluded a consultation period with staff whose jobs were put at risk this month. The outcome of that process is expected to be made public in May.
Cuts have been examined across Thanet council departments as part of an ‘efficiencies’ programme.
According to the budget for 2019-20 -which was agreed by a majority at full council on February 28 – proposals were to make £250,000 in savings.
