Hackney Council set to spend nearly £40m on agency staff

Cllr Robert Chapman, cabinet member for finance. Photograph: Hackney Council

Hackney Council is forecast to spend almost £40 million on temporary workers this year amid a struggle to recruit and retain “specialist” staff.

Reports published last month show the local authority expects its bill for agency staff to top £39.6m by the end of March 2026.

Town Hall finance chief Cllr Robert Chapman said the authority was focusing on hiring and retaining more permanent workers, but he admitted there had been recruitment issues, particularly around “specialist or hard-to-fill roles”.

The latest figures are an improvement on last year, when the council shelled out a whopping £53m on temporary staff.

In the report from late October, the council stated it was “already forecasting a drastic reduction in agency spend” after redesigning council services.

Cllr Chapman said: “Our aim is to maintain a stable, skilled workforce that provides consistent, high-quality services for Hackney residents.”

The council directorate spending the most money (£10m) on agency staff is Climate, Homes and Economy, which oversees services like housing development and the borough’s decarbonisation programme.

Documents show more than half (£6.4m) of this department’s expenditure on its temporary workforce this year has been focused on filling vacant permanent posts.

According to a source from inside the council, interim and external contracts inside this department are “endemic”.

They added that the directorate had seen a high turnover of senior directors since 2022.

In August, it was reported that the council’s recent proposals to restructure parts of the housing department were met with threats of strike action earlier this summer, though the walkouts were later called off following negotiations.

It is understood that the council recently deleted its chief officer role of Strategic Director of Housing Services.

Mayor of Hackney Caroline Woodley previously said the Town Hall would tackle its projected £51m budget gap over the next three years through its ‘Corporate Transformation’ project.

In September, Woodley clarified that this would mean cutting 220 posts within the council, while trying to limit the number of compulsory redundancies.

This would mean 90 redundancies in total, made “primarily” through reducing agency staffing, she said.

A 2024 survey by the Local Government Association (LGA) revealed that over 90 per cent of councils were struggling to fill roles in at least one occupation.