Agenda item

To provide an overview of the Council’s workforce, strategic workforce planning and employee wellbeing.

Cllr Dana Carlin, Cabinet Member for Finance & Corporate Services, introduced the report for this item which provided an overview of the Council’s workforce, strategic workforce planning and employee wellbeing. She drew the Committee’s attention to Appendix A, which was a copy of the People report that is provide to the General Purposes Committees. She noted that the overall numbers had not reduced, particularly with the recent insourcing of Homes for Haringey and the Fusion contract for leisure centres.

Referring to paragraph 3.3.1 of the main report, Cllr Carlin said that the Council had a dedicated wellbeing hub with support and resources available on the staff intranet and various programmes for employees.

Dan Paul, Chief People Officer, reported that the Council had agreed a Workforce Strategy in July 2024 which led to a process of planning within directorates and services. The process developed by Human Resources for this was summarised in section 3.2 of the main report and was ready to be rolled out from Autumn 2026 in line with the new Corporate Delivery Plan and Council service planning in order to help deliver the next administration’s priorities. On workforce wellbeing, he noted that this was regularly discussed with the trade unions and, as illustrated in Appendix 1, sickness levels were currently on a downward trajectory.

Cllr Carlin and Dan Paul then responded to questions from the Committee:

• Cllr Small acknowledged and welcomed the recent success in bringing down the number of agency staff. However, he queried why, according to Appendix 1, there were the equivalent of 45 full-time positions who were off-payroll interims and consultants. Cllr Carlin responded that most of these were not consultants but were positions in certain areas with recruitment difficulties. While efforts were made to reduce this, this was an issue across all local authorities and included areas such as digital, surveyors, lawyers and finance. The Council aimed to address this by recruiting and training staff from universities, though this was difficult to do in competition with the private sector. She added that there were some staff who preferred to work on a consultancy basis rather than a Council salary, but were also generating significant income for the Council in the work that they were doing. Dan Paul clarified that the posts included in the Off Payroll Workforce section of Appendix A were only those costing £500 per day or more. He reiterated that these tended to involve technical or hard to find skills and some were short-term cover for senior posts so were not always more expensive than a permanent employee.
• Cllr Small queried whether there were aspects of the Council’s pay bands and structures that made it more difficult to recruit in certain areas. Cllr Carlin confirmed that it was possible to override salaries in hard to recruit areas and that this decision was taken on occasion. However, in some areas, even this was not sufficient to overcome the recruitment difficulties. Dan Paul added that this practice was referred to as a ‘market supplement’ but that this was only done carefully in certain circumstances to avoid diluting the salary structure.
• Cllr Small asked about the role of constrained budgets when conducting workforce planning. Cllr Carlin explained that all directorates planned within a financial envelope and individually looked at strategic workforce plans with restructures required in some areas. She said that it was important to ensure that the workforce was up to date and delivered what was needed. Dan Paul added that the strategic planning and the financial planning needed to go hand in hand and in line with the priorities of the Council. As the finances of the Council were more constrained, this impacted on the services that could be provided and the workforce that could provide those services. As set out in the report, the workforce had grown up to this point but that might not necessarily be the case in future given the financial circumstances.
• Cllr Connor questioned why there had been a reduction in the number of apprentices in Adults, Housing & Health from 57 in June 2025 to 47 in September 2025 according to Appendix A. Dan Paul explained that the majority of these were existing employees undertaking funded qualifications as opposed to new employees coming in on an apprenticeship. He added that there were natural ebbs and flows to these numbers throughout the year as people started or finished courses.
• Cllr Connor queried how the 5% workforce cut was being delivered, given the increases in demand for statutory services. Dan Paul said that this was a wider strategic question for the Council, but that the total workforce numbers were not yet being significantly reduced. He added that, if employee numbers were to increase in statutory service areas, then this would typically necessitate reductions in other areas. Cllr Carlin clarified that some directorates had achieved their 5% staff reductions while others hadn’t, though there may be further movement as restructures were implemented. The figures also did not reflect housing services where there had been significant recruitment, but was funded from the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) rather than the General Fund. Dan Paul added that part of the 5% reduction included deleting vacant posts and so this wouldn’t necessarily be reflected in the overall current employee figures. There were also other factors, such as the increase in the amount of annual leave that employees were allowed to purchase, which had brought in an additional £50k in 2024/25 but then £300k in 2025/26.
• Cllr White queried whether further savings could be achieved by allowing some staff to reduce their contracted hours if they wanted a more flexible work-life balance. Dan Paul responded that the Council had a significant number of part-time employees and that, when the annual leave buying limits were increased from 10 days to 26 days, this was because 26 days equated to one additional day off per fortnight and this was now a flexible option available to staff.