Congratulations – Folkestone & Hythe District Council Spend £1.3 million On Temporary Staff in 19/20

They’ve smashed it. We said they would, we knew they would and they didn’t let us down.

Folkestone & Hythe District Council have spent more money on Temporary Staff in 2019/20 than in any other previous financial year.

In 2017/18 the Council spent £1,043,789 on temporary staff. That was a record.

In 2019/20 between April 1st and March 31st, the Council has spent £1,338,239 on temporary staff. This is an increase of 78.5% on the previous year’s spending, 2018/19, on temporary staff. This is the second time the council has broken the million pound barrier on temporary staff.

We anticipated the final spend total would be in excess of £1.2 back in February when we congratulated the council on setting a new record then. We would ask Dr. Susan Priest (pictured) – Head of Paid Service of FHDC and Cllr David Monk (pictured) explain why spending on temporary staff costs have increased by almost 80%.

Temporary staff have been deployed across most Council departments such as finance, planning, legal services, garden maintenance for example. Some departments inevitably need temporary staff, but to justify spending £1.3 million plus when you’re in the middle of an efficiency drive and the council have spent over half a million on redundancy costs makes little if any economic sense.

However, savings do not require that efficiencies be recorded net of up-front investment costs i.e. if you spend money to save money, you count the money saved but not the money spent in the process. By this logic, scrapping posts and hiring in consultants and temporary staff counts as a total saving and this is something our Council like many others will continue to do. As such, we expect to see temporary staff costs to fluctuate for a few years yet.

The Shepwayvox Team

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