Without the right staff, councils cannot deliver for communities
Despite local government being able to offer a rewarding career, where officers can make a positive impact on people and communities, councils across England are struggling with workforce capacity. This is having a negative effect on their ability to deliver the services on which the public rely.
The LGA recently conducted a survey investigating workforce capacity issues across six local government service areas – adult social care, building control, environmental health, finance, IT, and legal. The survey data is concerning, but will not surprise those working in local government.
One workforce issue councils are enduring is a high number of vacancies in key service areas. For example, in the average council building control or legal team, around a quarter of posts are currently vacant. This is very high compared with other public sector organisations – the current NHS vacancy rate is 8 per cent.
There are many factors resulting in high vacancy rates, but a leading cause is being unable to offer a competitive salary to retain staff.
When asked about the reasons given by staff for leaving, the most common response across all six service areas was for more pay.
“Not having enough permanent staff is forcing councils to become reliant on agency workers”
Not being able to recruit and retain the right employees is leaving councils short-staffed. Just half of the heads of adult social care teams surveyed think they will have the right amount of mental health staff to deliver services next year. With too few care workers, the health of the people local councils care for is put at risk.
Similarly, only half of those who head up environmental health services stated that they were confident they would have a sufficient number of environmental protection officers.
Not having enough permanent staff is forcing councils to become increasingly reliant on agency workers.
There are only four permanent members of staff for every one agency worker in council legal services.
Finance and building control teams are in a similar situation, with seven permanent staff for every one finance agency worker, and eight permanent staff for every building control agency worker.
These workers are typically more expensive than permanent staff, costing councils millions of pounds and, sometimes, causing issues around quality and consistency of service.
Across English councils, an estimated £277 million was spent in 2022/23 on agency workers for adult social care services. This is an average of £1.8 million per council (not including districts).
Other service areas also have very high spends on agency staff, with £94 million being spent on legal agency staff and £71 million on finance agency staff.
To assist with the workforce issues local councils are facing, the LGA offers government-funded programmes to support officers and help build a pipeline of future talent.
This includes early careers’ support, such as Impact, and other graduate schemes for finance and planning.
There are also development programmes for chief executives, senior officers and ‘rising stars’.
In addition, the LGA provides practical assistance to councils on the workforce challenges they are facing, including support with strategic workforce planning, recruitment and retention, and workforce capacity.
The support available to local government can be found on the workforce pages of the LGA’s website.
With a new UK government elected, the LGA will emphasise the significance of these findings and encourage ministers to support councils in taking action to address this workforce capacity challenge.