A meeting of Wokingham borough council’s employment and staffing will be asked to note its spending on agency workers.
The agency spend for Q1 and Q2 of the financial year 2025/26 covers April to September 2025, and in the agenda for Thursday’s meeting, the spend has been broken down into directorate spending.
Adult and social care recorded a total spend across Q1 and Q2 of £1.28 million, the chief executive;s department was £284,000, \children’s services was £1.12 million, places and growth was £661,000 and resources and assets was £419,000.
Notes for the meeting said: “During for the first half of the year, we have seen some significant success in recruiting into senior roles at service director level across children’s services and place and growth, which has all been done organically and within our own framework, and no utilisation of external agencies to market and recruit on our behalf.
“For the first time in a significant period of time, we have a stable and permanent service director layer within children’s services, under our director of children’s services, which has seen success in growing our own from our heads of service cohort and an external appointment.
“This has resulted in allowing us to release interims, on a day rate and with a tenure over two years, from the council in this area.
“Within place and growth, there were, again, service director roles that were occupied by interims however we have been successful in appointing into roles from external markets, allowing a release of a five-year tenure interim to oversee the local plan, but we have also
been able to offer acting up arrangements to existing heads of service rather than engage interim workers for vacancies.
“During the reporting period, we were also successful in appointing a deputy director of public health, again all engaged organically through our own recruitment channels and whilst the interim director of public health was not released until Autumn 2025, this shows the council’s ability to attract into these roles where we have previously struggled and have, to ensure we are resilient and able to deliver what we have needed to, had reliance on agency and interim workers.
“In addition to this, long term vacant heads of service roles within adult social care are now being filled with permanent staff which will again see the release of interims as a result of this.
“Despite facing significant challenges in recruitment in the procurement and legal world, we have been successful in securing a permanent procurement team, most of which will be onboarded and in place in the second half of the year.
“We have had to engage to interims to stabilise this service, due to the procurement act changes and the same within legal, however we are now seeing locums that are converting into permanent contracts with the council.
“By the council allowing a flexible approach to how we work we have been able to attract permanent workers into roles we typically struggle to fill.”
The notes added: “Our previous reports highlight the national pressures that certain sectors, of local government face, so we would again reflect that it is important to recognise that there are specific scenarios where reliance on temporary workers is both a necessary and appropriate resourcing solution to meet service delivery needs especially in areas where staffing numbers are governed by statutory requirement e.g., in the care services.
“This obviously needs to be underpinned by commercial cost governance.
“We often have long term placements in some areas as they are being utilised flexibly across the whole service to meet the needs as they arise, cover vacancies that we have been unable to recruit into to cover during absences such as maternity and to fulfil the roles created by grant funded initiatives.
In addition to this, there is a need for a specialist skillset to assist with a project delivery that is aligned to the organisation’s change priorities. Being able to harness ‘turn on/turn off resources is key, especially in areas like digital, data and technology, and change as it is a cost-effective way to undertake critical work such as technology infrastructure, network changes and projects.”
The costs of agency staff are included in the overall budget monitoring position taken quarterly to the council’s executive committee.. Wherever possible, officers will meet costs from permanent staff vacancies or other underspends.
Where agency staff result in a budget pressure, this will be detailed in the monitoring report in line with usual reporting arrangements.
