Quick! Band Aid For the Housing Benefits Service!

Following my recent pieces on the decline and fall of NCC's Housing Benefits service (including the revelation that the most recent figures put them as second worst in the country for processing new claims), all of a sudden NCC goes galloping in with a 'solution'.

Yes they are running to a private sector agency to get a load of temporary staff. Apparently, £112k gets you 12 staff for 12 weeks, an equivalent cost of £40k/yr for each one. That will include employer's NI payments of course but you can bet it doesn't include any pension contributions like a directly employed staff member would be entitled to. I'd guess a directly employed Benefits Processing staff member would be on around £20k so actual cost of their employment would be around £26k. So in round numbers the agency staff are costing something like half as much again as a directly employed staff member.

Like I said before, they're just lurching from crisis to crisis.

In other Housing Benefits news, the ever generous government has been handing out cash to help councils 'ease the transition' of the HB cuts. This money is not designed to be paid out as, say, part of the DHP scheme but to be used for infrastructure to deal with the fallout.

Slightly chillingly, look at the first item the government suggests as an intended use of the money -

"For example, preventing homelessness, negotiating with landlords, supporting people who need to move, and giving money advice."

Hasn't the government been telling us that nobody will be made homeless by these cuts?

Nottingham is getting the princely sum of £57,992 for 2012. That's just over half what NCC are planning on frittering away fixing their current problems. Doesn't bode well.

Not In the Public Interest? Or Just Plain Embarrassing?

We appear to have another example of an NCC committee getting a bit mixed up over the difference between keeping something from the public because it's in the public interest and doing so because it's politically embarrassing.

This time it's the Appointments and Conditions of Service Committee who are meeting next month to discuss a report on how to reduce expenditure on temporary and agency staff and the (probably deceptively) benign sounding 'managing the impact on colleagues of the financial challenges affecting the council'.

These are the only two issues on the agenda and they are both due to be discussed in secret yet, bizarrely, the standard info for spectators is added at the bottom of the agenda -

"CITIZENS ATTENDING MEETINGS ARE ASKED TO ARRIVE AT LEAST FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE THE START OF THE MEETING TO BE ISSUED WITH VISITOR BADGES"

Might have been an idea to add that there really isn't any point because you're not going to see anything.

NCC has been criticised before about its spend on consultants and temporary staff, mostly on here but also by UNISON. And before you say they're not the same thing we do seem to find consultants being drafted in as temporary or 'interim' managers, sometimes using consultants who in turn employ other consultants. So it's likely that a discussion of their use will result in embarrassing disclosures. On the other hand, the agenda item is being described as as 'approach and phase 1 report' so it seems unlikely that it will involve discussing PricewaterhouseCoopers' most intimate business secrets and the few confidential financial matters that do creep in could easily be banished to an exempt appendix. But no, NCC makes the lot secret and my bet is that, if challenged, they would indeed justify it on there being financial matters involved. It's just coincidence that the embarrassing stuff also gets kept under wraps you understand. No really.

Of course this is nothing new, the call-in sub-committee tried to hide the fact that Harold Tinworth was planning to provide political advice at taxpayers' expense and Hassan Ahmed and Graham Chapman made the decision to end CEHRNN's funding in secret and since then Ahmed's downright duplicitous behaviour and conflict of interest in making the decision has come to light.

Recruitment Agencies

Just seen an interesting little FoIA snippet on the 'What Do They Know' site.

According to this response, NCC actually increased the amount it spent on a temp agency called Taskforce last year.

Bear in mind that at the beginning of the 2009/10 financial year NCC was implementing its 'Workforce Reductions' phase 1, losing 438 posts between Feb and Nov 2009 (source p16 here). Yet the amount paid to Taskforce increased from £2,675,928.20 in 08/09 to £2,923,697.75in 09/10.

Among the compulsory redundancies were the lift maintenance team, which eventually had to be replaced by consultants Dunbar and Boardman following a serious accident. I'm waiting to hear how much this contract is costing.

I wonder how many other hidden costs there are that result from the slashing of jobs?

PS The FoIA request that this relates to was submitted on 15 Sep and answered on 17 Sep. My request about payments to Dunbar and Boardman was submitted before it yet has not been answered yet.