Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, which five companies were used most often to provide temporary workers for his Department in the last financial year; and how much in agency fees was paid to each of them.

In answering this question, we have used the Cabinet Office definition for contingent labour (temporary staff) which includes admin and clerical agency staff, interim managers and specialist contractors: use of such staff for short-term or specialist work can be better value for money than hiring staff on permanent contracts.

Details of the five companies that my Department has used most often in the last financial year for the provision of contingent labour are set out below:

Financial Year 2013-14

To put this in context, my Department has cut spending on contingent labour from £14.4 million in 2009-10 to £3.3 million in 2013-14 as a result of the tightening of its internal management controls, institutionalising these in its systems and adhering to Treasury and Cabinet Office spending rules. This represents a saving of £11.1 million a year (2013-14 compared to 2009-10)

In addition to the savings on temporary workers, our departmental audited annual accounts for the core Department show that staff costs fell from £216 million in 2009-10 to £99 million in 2012-13, a reduction of 54% in cash terms, or a further saving of £117 million a year.

These savings also reflect the Coalition Government's agenda of decentralisation, ending the micromanagement of local government, the abolition of regional government, and the broader need to tackle the deficit left by the last Administration.