Concerns over 'gold-plated' jobs at Haringey Council

Amid a national skills shortage the local authority is paying £7m for the equivalent of just 45 full-time staff, reports Joe Ives, Local Democracy Reporter

Haringey Council is struggling to recruit highly-trained staff, leading to a near £7million average annual bill for fewer than 50 full-time workers.

Speaking at an overview and scrutiny meeting on Thursday (12th) Dana Carlin, the council’s cabinet member for finance, said the national demand of staff in key areas was to blame.

“We’re having huge difficulty recruiting, especially where there’s an overlap with [the] private sector,” said Cllr Carlin.

The senior Labour councillor explained that staff shortages in highly-paid but essential professions such as law, accountancy and surveying was to blame.

Adam Small, the Labour chair of the local authority’s housing, planning and development scrutiny panel, expressed his surprise at the figures published in a recent council report.

“It seems that we currently have the equivalent of 45 full-time members of staff and its currently costing us £7m,” he said.

“Which, by my poor maths – and I know this isn’t exactly how it works – is about an average of £150,000 per person. Are they gold-plated? What’s going on there?”

Responding to the of the cost concerns Cllr Carlin said: “Obviously it’s a high number and it’s certainly something that we try to reduce.”

She referred to the council’s strategy of “growing our own” through recruiting and training university leavers.

“It is not a shortage for Haringey,” Cllr Carlin continued, “every local authority has the same shortage, with the same skills”.

Without going into detail, Cllr Carlin said that some of these staff are beneficial to the council’s budget in the long run.

“They’re bringing in a lot of money,” she said. “It would cost us to get rid of them even though we’re paying them a lot.”

A council officer added: “Some of these staff are technically skilled, some of them have hard-to-find skills, some of them are short-term cover for senior posts.”

As a result, he said, this means the council has to top up their salary through ‘market supplements’ to get staff through the door.

According to the Local Government Association, a market supplement is an extra payment which may be given where the ‘going rate’ for a specific job or specialism is higher than the council currently offers and, as a result, has been unable to recruit or retain staff.

The officer noted a reduction in the overall numbers of these staff and explained the local authority would “continue to focus on reducing those numbers”.

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