Date received: 24 July 2023
Date responded: 21 August 2023
Information Requested:
Request: Agency staff
1. Please advise the total spend on recruitment agencies in the 2022-2023 financial year?
Please breakdown both spend on the agency that finds candidates for job vacancies and agencies that supply temporary staff ?
2. Please advise what the temporary agency spend for admin, call centre, data processing and clerical roles in the 2022-2023 financial year?
3. Please advise what the temporary agency spend for roles such as warehouse, catering and cleaners in the 2022-2023 financial year?
4. Please advise what the permanent agency spend has been in the 2022-2023 financial year?
Redress Scotland’s Response:
1. Please advise the total spend on recruitment agencies in the 2022-2023 financial year? Redress Scotland’s total spend on recruitment agencies in the 2022-2023 financial year was £759,949.
This can be broken down into £45,004 for recruitment agency costs, and the remainder for the supply of temporary staff.
2. Please advise what the temporary agency spend for admin, call centre, data processing and clerical roles in the 2022-2023 financial year? As this information is not held in the way requested and would require input from a number of different teams in order to pull through, we will not be able to answer at this time.
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act allows us to decline to answer FOI requests when we estimate it would cost us more than £450 (18 hours of work, calculated at £25 per hour as the legislation sets out), which this question would exceed. This is because some of our temporary agency posts have covered multiple categories, and we would therefore need to undertake detailed analysis on all of our contracts and invoices. This would include having to go back through all of these documents to understand what individuals had been working on when, which would not be a cost-effective analysis to undertake.
You can find out more about Section 12 at the following link: Freedom of Information Act 2000 (legislation.gov.uk)
Although we cannot answer this question, we might be able to answer a refined request within the cost limit. You may wish to consider, for example, reducing the amount of roles you are enquiring about. Please be aware that we cannot guarantee at this stage that a refined request will fall within the FOI cost limit.
3. Please advise what the temporary agency spend for roles such as warehouse, catering and cleaners in the 2022-2023 financial year? There was no temporary agency spend for roles such as warehouse, catering and cleaners in the financial year 2022-2023.
4. Please advise what the permanent agency spend has been in the 2022-2023 financial year? There was no permanent agency spend in the 2022-2023 financial year.