Spending on agency staff for children’s services quadruples

A COUNCIL’S spending on agency staff for its children’s services department will have almost quadrupled in three years.

The bill for Bradford Council is now £17m a year, which means the department is spending about £1.5m each month on agency staff.

The figures were revealed in a document to be discussed by the council’s executive on Tuesday.

The financial report says the council’s social care budget has overspent by £4.9m in the past year due to higher workloads and an increased reliance on agency staff.

As of February, there were 149 agency social workers employed in the service. In April 2019, there were just 53 agency social workers at the council.

It was recently revealed that 34 agency workers have worked for the council’s children’s services for over a year.

Agency staff are not permanent staff, but work for an outside agency and are brought on a temporary basis. They are often brought into areas where there are staffing shortages. However, employing agency staff is more expensive than paying permanent staff.

The report to the executive says: “The forecast overspend is mainly due to the continued use of agency staff due to problems recruiting staff into permanent positions.

“The amounts incurred on Agency staff have increased significantly over recent years – £4.3m in 2018-19, £11.7m in 2019-20, and £17.0m forecast for this year – and are currently running at approximately £1.4m per month.”

Officers said work is underway to boost recruiting meaning fewer agency staff would be needed, but the report added: “So far, agency staff numbers have continued to grow overall as a result of increased workloads resulting in the significant overspend.”

Members of the council’s corporate scrutiny committee recently discussed the high levels of agency staff, and heard that it is partly down to the need for higher level social workers in children’s services who work on complex cases.