Glasgow City Council spends over £20m on agency staff to cover vacancies and absences in one year

Council bosses spent more than £20m on agency staff to cover vacancies and absences last financial year in Glasgow.

The biggest cost – £11.2m – was seen on supply teachers during 2024 to 2025 with cover used for short and long term vacancies and sickness.

A total of £4.9m went on agency workers for the council’s neighbourhoods, regeneration and sustainability (NRS) department due to high turnovers of staff, particularly within refuse and waste.

It was the equivalent of an estimated 174,000 hours according to a council report.

The amount contributed to a £33m overspend in NRS the year.

The majority of £5.2m on agency spend within health and social care was used for older people residential and care services.

The council report said: “This was to maintain staffing levels due to absence or whilst posts were being recruited to however a split between them is not available.

“The costs of agency equated to around four per cent of the total employee cost budgets for these areas. The costs of agency were managed within this budget for 2024 to 2025.

“Overall, the Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) reported an operational underspend of £0.4m at year end 2024 to 2025. The cost of agency employees and HSCP staff are comparable.”

The cash used to cover for council staff were presented for the finance and audit scrutiny committee today following a question from Councillor Malcolm Mitchell asking for details of agency spend across all services.

Other spend saw £75,000 go towards specialist lawyers in equal pay and £1.54m for the digital services team.

Catering agency staff cost £474,000 during the period in question while cleaning in care homes, children’s units and day care centres cost £359,000.