Council spending on temporary staff surged by £5m last year after it made hundreds of workers redundant in a supposed cost-cutting drive.
Unions denounced "a gross waste of money" after Croydon Council forked out £20.6m on agency and interim workers, some employed to plug gaps left by the 632 permanent staff who lost their jobs in the last five years.
The rise, up from £15.6m last year, follows a intensive redundancy drive between 2010 and 2012 in which 435 employees were made unemployed, leaving the council with a £7.5m bill for compensation packages.
It paid out a further £1.9m last year to 79 staff made redundant and 40 who took voluntary redundancy.
Onay Kasab, regional officer for Unite, described the figures as "obscene".
He said: "There have been a huge number of permanent jobs lost and yet the work still needs to be done. Those posts have been filled by agency staff.
Onay Kasab
"With agency and temporary staff there are the fees to the agencies and the recruitment still takes time, but unfortunately the reason local authorities do it - especially large ones like Croydon - is to maintain some kind of control over their workforce.
"The cost simply is not worth it. It is a gross waste of money."
Mr Kasab suggested social services and housing departments were most likely to rely on temporary workers.
Croydon Council spent £674,000 more than it budgeted for last year on staffing within its children in need services after it imposed a recruitment freeze, leaving gaps in its workforce which it plugged with agency workers.
Coun Tony Newman, leader of the council’s Labour opposition group, described the figures as "a scandal".
He said: "They have made people with will many years of experience and qualifications on the dole and then employed temporary consultants, often at two or three times the rate of pay, to do the same job.
"It shows a completely short-sighted approach and is a huge waste of both human resources, including many local people, and taxpayers’ money."
Steve O'Connell, the council's cabinet member for finance, denied the redundancy drive had left the council's workforce short.
But he said: "There will always, regretfully, be turnover of staff and sometimes that will leave gaps that would only need to be covered by agency staff over a short period without going through a complete full-time hiring process."
Coun Tony Newman
He added: "The council is going through a period of serious and significant change and over a period of time has employed interim staff to ensure the business runs effectively and there's continuity.
"Of course, that would include covering shortages in some areas and high-skilled specialist project work for which it would be sensible to hire agency staff as opposed to taking on permanent staff."
The council this week reported a projected overspend of £2.3m between between April and June, the first quarter of the financial year.
The largest unbudgeted outlay was a £981,000 overspend on its children-in-need service's assessment and care planning team, 78 per cent of which is staffed by agency workers.
Coun Steve O'Connell
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel