By Tash Shifrin
30 July 2009
A single Whitehall department has run up a bill of more than £570m – more than a fifth of its resource budget – on consultants, temporary staff and professional services in just one year.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spent a total of £573.3m on buying in the staff services in 2007/08, out of a resource budget of nearly £2.7bn. More than £80.8m was spent on external staffing and consultancy by its troubled Rural Payments Agency.
Overall, Defra spent £61.8m on external consultants and £62.1m on temporary staff. A further £449.3m was spent on ‘professional services other’ – a category that includes £358.2m for its Warmfront programme, which provides home insulation and heating services for people on benefits.
In the 2007/08 financial year, Warmfront provided some level of assistance to 268,900 households – spending an average of £1,332 on professional services per household.
The temporary, consultancy and professional services figures, buried in an appendix to the department’s annual report, were criticised by the Public and Commercial Services union, which represents Defra staff.
‘Our fear is this demonstrates that they are using consultants and professional fees to mask job losses,’ a PCS spokesman said. ‘There’s quite clearly a body of work that needs to be done. A far more cost-effective way would be to employ people on a permanent basis to do that work.’
He highlighted the spending at the RPA, where £47.9m was spent on temporary staff alone. ‘Some of those have been working there for two or even three years,’ he said. ‘They don’t see all of their hourly wage – a proportion of it goes to the recruitment agency. You have to ask if this is sensible.’
A spokeswoman for Defra emphasised that £358.2m of the £449m bill for ‘professional services other’ was spent on the Warmfront programme, which has since been transferred to the Department for Energy and Climate Change. ‘This programme was a significant programme which was delivered externally as a more cost effective way than if it were run internally,’ she said.
The department used consultants and temporary staff where it needed temporary specialised advice or access to labour resources ‘that it would not make commercial sense to retain in-house’, she said.
30 July 2009
A single Whitehall department has run up a bill of more than £570m – more than a fifth of its resource budget – on consultants, temporary staff and professional services in just one year.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spent a total of £573.3m on buying in the staff services in 2007/08, out of a resource budget of nearly £2.7bn. More than £80.8m was spent on external staffing and consultancy by its troubled Rural Payments Agency.
Overall, Defra spent £61.8m on external consultants and £62.1m on temporary staff. A further £449.3m was spent on ‘professional services other’ – a category that includes £358.2m for its Warmfront programme, which provides home insulation and heating services for people on benefits.
In the 2007/08 financial year, Warmfront provided some level of assistance to 268,900 households – spending an average of £1,332 on professional services per household.
The temporary, consultancy and professional services figures, buried in an appendix to the department’s annual report, were criticised by the Public and Commercial Services union, which represents Defra staff.
‘Our fear is this demonstrates that they are using consultants and professional fees to mask job losses,’ a PCS spokesman said. ‘There’s quite clearly a body of work that needs to be done. A far more cost-effective way would be to employ people on a permanent basis to do that work.’
He highlighted the spending at the RPA, where £47.9m was spent on temporary staff alone. ‘Some of those have been working there for two or even three years,’ he said. ‘They don’t see all of their hourly wage – a proportion of it goes to the recruitment agency. You have to ask if this is sensible.’
A spokeswoman for Defra emphasised that £358.2m of the £449m bill for ‘professional services other’ was spent on the Warmfront programme, which has since been transferred to the Department for Energy and Climate Change. ‘This programme was a significant programme which was delivered externally as a more cost effective way than if it were run internally,’ she said.
The department used consultants and temporary staff where it needed temporary specialised advice or access to labour resources ‘that it would not make commercial sense to retain in-house’, she said.
