So many housing repairs in Southwark, that they needed to splash £420k on temp staff

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

Southwark council spent £420,000 on 10 call centre staff after it was swamped with repair problems from residents.

The Labour-run local authority dipped into reserves last year to cover the cost of the temporary workers, who are responsible for calling back residents with problems.

Southwark brought in the so-called ‘call-back staff’ to prevent people having to wait on the phone for long periods of time, while operators on the other end collected information from different departments to resolve issues.

The extra workers were not accounted for in the annual budget, meaning the council had to draw on departmental reserves to cover costs associated with the additional staff.

Cllr Stephanie Cryan, cabinet member for finance, revealed the council had been taking on the temporary call centre employees for 18 months at an overview and scrutiny meeting on Tuesday.

Challenged by Labour councillor Sam Foster that it seemed ‘illogical’ not to budget for the extra staff, Cllr Cryan defended the decision to use reserves to cover their costs.

She said: “The actual departmental reserves are covering it. My worry is if we say ‘let’s budget more for it’ then I’m going to have to find a corresponding saving somewhere else.”

Cllr Cryan added that as improvements were made to the council’s repairs service in future years, she expected the call back staff to be no longer needed.

She said: “The idea being that as the repairs improvement plan embeds more and more, the ‘right first time’ increases and the productivity increases in terms of jobs, that actually that resource is no longer needed. And that’s why it’s done on temporary staff rather than permanent staff.”

Cllr Foster replied that he still considered the budgeting arrangements ‘illogical’. But he added that he accepted Cllr Cryan’s argument that accounting for the costs associated with the staff in this year’s budget would cause ‘other issues’.

Pictured top: Southwark council’s Tooley Street HQ (Picture: Google Street View)