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In the last financial year DfT spent over £27M on temporary staff

10 March 2010

In reality the spend was probably higher.

This information came from a reply to a parliamentary answer (Hansard, 8 March 2010 : Column 15W; the full reply is found below).

As well as the spend data the answer gives the number of temp staff recorded as working in DfT last financial year. This was a staggering 1,075.

Yet the answer admits “there are no centralised records relating to the numbers of temporary staff” and “Where records are available, the numbers of temporary staff employed by the Department in the past three years are”. Therefore it is probable that more temp staff were hired than the “available” records show.

Whoever wins the next election will cut civil service numbers; DfT will not be immune to those cuts. Clearly though it would be wrong (morally, legally and in terms of saving money) to reduce civil service numbers while maintaining this level of temporary staff.

The Union position is that when it comes to cutting staff, temporary staff have to be shed first, before permanent staff.
 

Departmental temporary staff


Grant Shapps: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport from which companies his Department sourced temporary staff in each of the last three years; how many temporary staff his Department employed in each year; and what the monetary value of the contracts with each such company was in each such year. [320013]

Chris Mole: The Department for Transport and its executive agencies operate separate finance and Human Resource systems and there are no centralised records relating to the numbers of temporary staff employed or the value of contracts with suppliers used to source temporary staff. To search across the Department's disparate finance and Human Resource systems to obtain this information would incur disproportionate cost.

Information relating to spend on temporary staff is published in the Department's annual report. In the past three years these figures are:


                 £ million
2006-07      16.906
2007-08      27.265
2008-09      27.700

Where records are available, the numbers of temporary staff employed by the Department in the past three years are:

                  Number
2006-07        1,088
2007-08        1,353
2008-09        1,075

A table has been placed in the Libraries of the House showing the suppliers that the Department has used to source temporary staff between April 2007 and March 2009 and spend during this period.

 

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