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FOI 2019-121 – Recruitment Agencies

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Date Answered: 7 October 2019

This request asked:
1. Does your organisation utilise recruitment agencies for temporary and permanent staff? Yes or No?
2. Does your organisation have a centralised staffing booking team for recruitment agencies? Yes or No?
3. Between 1 January 2014 and 1 January 2019 how many staff were working in the department via recruitment agencies? Please provide these figures as an annual breakdown between 2014-19.
4. Please provide details of the Department’s annual agency staff spend between 1 January 2014 and 1 January 2019 for temporary placements only. Please provide these figures as an annual breakdown.
5. Please provide details of the Department’s annual agency staff spend between 1 January 2014 and 1 January 2019 for permanent placements only. Please provide these figures as an annual breakdown.
6. Please provide details of the department’s annual agency spend between 1 January 2014 and 1 January 2019 for temporary placements only for the following staffing categories. Please provide these figures as an annual breakdown:
 A&C
 Corporate
 Finance
 IT
 Legal
 Other
7. Please provide details of the department’s annual agency spend between 2013-18 for permanent placements only for the following staffing categories. Please provide these figures as an annual breakdown:
 A&C
 Corporate
 Finance
 IT
 Legal
 Other
Our response:
1. Yes
2. All SFO recruitment is handled by the Human Resources department. There is no specific team within Human Resources that is dedicated to bookings from recruitment agencies.
3. The table below outlines how many temporary staff recruited from agencies were working at the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) between 2014 and 2019. Please note that since this data is centrally recorded in Financial Years I have provided a snapshot of the number on the 31st of March, the last day of each Financial Year. The SFO financial year covers the period 1st April to 31st March.

Financial Year Number of staff from recruitment agencies
31 March 2014 48
31 March 2015  95
31 March 2016 105
31 March 2017 133
31 March 2018 121
31 March 2019 96

 
4. The table below outlines the SFO’s annual expenditure on temporary staff by financial year.

Category 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 Total
Corporate 269,145 136,334 114,354 171,588 121,111 812,533
IT 491,120 419,359 415,539 707,599 681,893 2,715,510
Operational 3,695,839 6,266,696 5,389,054 5,988,508 4,472130 25,812,226
Operational Support 187,655 169,096 203,543 131,087 179,788 871,168

6. The SFO has a dedicated in-house recruitment team which deals with recruitment for permanent positions therefore agency spend on permanent staff recruitment is immaterial. With a very limited number of exceptions, SFO permanent staff vacancies are advertised on Civil Service Jobs.
7. The data requested in this question is outlined in the table from question 4.
8. As mentioned in the answer to question 5, the SFO has a dedicated in-house recruitment team which deals with recruitment for permanent positions therefore agency spend on permanent staff recruitment is immaterial.