Agenda item

A call-in request has been submitted on the decision regarding the Temporary Workers Staffing Contract taken by the Executive Mayor in Cabinet on 21 September 2022.

The Scrutiny & Overview Committee is asked to consider and respond to the Call-In in accordance with the procedure set out in the Council’s constitution.

(Please Note: The confidential Appendix B is attached as item 9 on the agenda. Appendix E, a report responding to the grounds given for the Call-In is to follow.)

The Committee considered a call-in request as set out on pages 5 to 24 of the agenda along with additional information in the second supplementary agenda concerning the decision made by the Mayor in Cabinet on the Temporary Workers Staffing Contract. In introducing the item, the Chair outlined why the call-in request had been made and explained the process for considering a call-in. Confirming that the Committee needed to agree whether to review the decision and if it was decided to proceed, it had to confirm how much time it wished to allocate for the discussion of the item. The Committee agreed that it would review the decision and allocated ninety minutes for its consideration.

The Chair went on to explain that there were three outcomes the Committee could reach following its review of the decision. These were: -

1.  That no further action was necessary and the decision could be implemented as originally intended.

2.  To refer the decision back to the decision maker for reconsideration, outlining the nature of the Committee’s concerns

3.  To refer the decision to Council, if the Committee considered that the decision taken was outside of the Budget and Policy Framework.

Before opening the item for the Committee’s questions, the Cabinet Member for Finance, Councillor Jason Cummings, and officers were given the opportunity to respond to the call-in. During this response, the following was noted: -

·         Staff wages accounted for the majority of spend within the contract and there was no separate budget held for agency staff. 

·         It was unlikely that the upper limit of the contract would be reached and there was no requirement within the contract to reach the full value spend.

·         The framework route had been chosen as it presented the best value for the Council from the additional buying power acquired through participating in a London wide framework.

·         The rates for the contract were locked in place for its duration.

·         A managed service provider was the best mechanism for the Council to both manage market forces and achieve best value.

·         Data provided by London Councils indicated that Croydon was sitting in the middle of London boroughs in terms of agency spend, which had dropped over the last two years.

·         Additional controls were in place through the spend control process to ensure that the Council recruited in the most efficient way.

Following the introduction to this item, the Committee proceeded to review the decision with a view to reaching a conclusion on the call-in. The first question highlighted that the Council was in the process of developing a People Strategy and as such questioned whether this contract would meet the needs of the strategy. In response it was advised that the strategy would look at longer term issues such as recruiting to the Council, the Council’s reputation as an employer and the package provided to staff. The contract was for temporary workers whereas the focus for the strategy would be permanent staff.

It was questioned whether the contract would provide the range of recruitment required by the Council to enable it to recruit to specialist roles. It was confirmed that it was a wide ranging contract, with specialist providers who could be used to source and headhunt skills scarce candidates. The HR team had regular meetings with teams in skills scarce areas to raise any issues that could be relayed to the vendor. It was highlighted that difficulties with recruitment were not unique to Croydon, with challenges in the labour market nationally.

It was confirmed that the Council did not currently collect data on the number of times a temporary contract was extended. The Committee agreed that data on the number of renewals should be tracked as part of the contract monitoring process.

It was noted that the Council had reduced its spend on temporary staff over the past two years and as such it was questioned whether the new contract would assist with this. It was advised that the reporting systems in place would allow expenditure to be monitored. It was repeated that there was no minimum spend in the contract and it was down to individual departments to manage this. Furthermore, any new expenditure would need to be authorised by the Spend Control Panel.

It was questioned whether the new contract would reduce the use of the redeployment pool. It was confirmed that it was a legal requirement to offer roles to a redeployment worker and it was important that a cost assessment was made to establish the viability of retraining someone from the redeployment pool for a new role. Should it not be viable, then there was still a need to have a facility in place to recruit temporary workers when needed.

It was confirmed that the journey towards awarding the contract began in 2017 when the Council led the evaluation panel for the framework. By using the framework option, it provided significant economies of scale, as 17 other local authorities were already using it.

In response to a question about how the performance of the contract would be evaluated, it was advised that it would primarily be evaluated on a financial basis. The Committee agreed that there needed to be a wider scope for the evaluation of the performance of the contract beyond purely financial terms. It was also agreed that it should be standard practice for all Council contracts to have a range of quantative and qualitative indicators in place to enable performance to be robustly assessed.

It was noted that the MStar3 Framework had been in place since 2019 and during that time the labour market had changed significantly. As such reassurance was sought that the framework still represented the best option for the Council. In response, it was advised that an updated MStart4 framework was likely to replace the existing framework in 2023, but as it was likely to be more expensive, it was a good option for the Council to lock in its contract to the costs of the current framework. Although there were no known imperatives to prefer the forthcoming MStar4 framework over the current MStar3 framework, there was scope to end the contract if the Council decided it wanted to move to the new framework. 

It was questioned whether any of the information set out in the confidential part of the report could have been included in the public version of the report. It was advised that as much information as possible was included in the Part A report and justification was needed to place information in a confidential, Part B report. This decision was often a matter of judgement based on an assessment of the risk from publication. Regarding this report, the decision to place information in a confidential report was based the grounds of on commercial confidentiality and legal professional privilege. The Committee agreed that the report had raised a wider issue about confidential information and agreed that the Council’s approach should be clarified and training provided to ensure that both Members and report authors were clear on the grounds for withholding information and when it should be used.

At the conclusion of this item the Chair thanked the Cabinet Members and officers for their engagement with the scrutiny of the Committee.

Conclusions

At the end of the item the members of the Scrutiny & Overview Committee reached the following conclusions:-

1.         In reviewing the Call-In request made on the Temporary Workers Staffing Contract, the Committee concluded that evidence it received in the report responding to the call-in, together with the evidence heard from the Cabinet Member for Finance and officer sat the committee meeting, provided sufficient reassurance that the issues raised had been addressed. As such it was agreed that no further action was necessary and the decision could proceed with immediate effect.

2.         However, in considering the call-in the Committee also concluded that there were wider issues raised that needed to be addressed. One such issue was the Council application of section 12A of the 1972 Local Government Act regarding the provision of withheld information in Committee reports. The Committee agreed that there seemed to be a lack of clarity over the exact requirements of this provision and that further guidance was required for both Members and report authors to understand what information could and could not be disclosed.

3.         Another key issue raised by the Committee was the information collected by the Council to evaluate the success of its contracts. There seemed to be an emphasis towards the purely financial aspects of contracts, but the Committee agreed that the evaluation process needed to include a qualitative framework as well as standard for all contracts awarded. 

Recommendations

The Scrutiny & Overview Committee agreed to make the following recommendations for the consideration of the Mayor in Cabinet.

1.         That the Monitoring Officer be asked to: -

a)  review the Council position on the disclosure of information to ensure that there is a presumption toward publication, unless doing so would present an obvious legal risk, and

b)  provide clear, practical guidance on what information should be provided in Part A & B reports to provide clarity for both report authors and Members.

2.         That the Monitoring Officer be asked to review the provision of legal guidance contained in reports to ensure: -

a)  The potential risks and their mitigations of a decision are clearly explained and avoid ambiguity, and

b)  Where a confidential report is required, there needs to be a clear explanation of the grounds for this in the public part of the agenda.

3.         That all Members are offered training on what information should be available in Parts A and B of a meeting and why.

4.         That any contracts awarded by the Council need to have a qualitative framework in place to ensure that an evaluation can be made on the success of the contract beyond the purely financial, and that staff from a variety of levels are included in this process.

5.         That officers are asked to proactively track data on how many times individual staff contracts are re-extended to be able to better evaluate the service.

6.         That officers are asked to engage with organisations including the Greater London Employment Forum when preparing the People Strategy.

7.         That the Chair of Scrutiny is given the opportunity to input into the latest constitutional review, where appropriate.