The Liberal Democrats at Somerset Council have been unable to confirm whether its new £3 million Pay and Grading Review will help reduce the authority’s reliance on agency staff or bring down its vacancy rate, despite spending over £33 million on agency workers since 2023.
At a recent Executive meeting, Conservative Group Leader Cllr Diogo Rodrigues questioned whether the programme, while designed to make pay more consistent across the organisation, would also lead to measurable savings or improvements in recruitment and retention.
Cllr Rodrigues said, “This Council has spent more than £33 million on agency staff since vesting day and currently has around 800 vacancies. If we’re spending another £3 million on a Pay and Grading Review, has any modelling been done to show that this will actually help fill posts and reduce those costs.”
In response the council confirmed that the current agency spend is funded from existing salary budgets and that the programme aims to move more agency roles onto permanent contracts. However, no modelling had yet been done to show how much agency spending or vacancies might be reduced as a result.
The council confirmed that while they hope to convert a “big proportion” of agency spend into permanent roles, it would continue to rely on temporary staff to maintain flexibility during the ongoing transformation process.
Cllr Rodrigues added afterwards, “The aim of this programme should be to make Somerset Council more efficient and more attractive as an employer. But if there’s no clear target to reduce agency costs or fill vacancies, then it’s currently difficult to see how residents will get value for money from another multi-million-pound spend.”
