Wirral Council paid a day rate of over £700 a day for some agency staff!
During the public inspection period I requested copies of a number of invoices from Matrix SCM Ltd to Wirral Council for agency staff. An example of one of those invoices for £308,534.18 (which doesn’t state much detail) is above.
Agency staff are provided by Matrix SCM Ltd to Wirral Council on either an hourly rate or day rate. In addition to this there can also be claims for mileage, parking and tunnel tolls.
The timesheets (which I link to as a zipped file as there are 62 of them) provide more detail on what the payments to Matrix SCM Ltd are for.
Seven years ago, a legal change meant that creating a job at Wirral Council on a salary of over £100,000 has to be voted on at a public meeting to which all its councillors are invited. A salary of £100,000 assuming 5 weeks 3 days holiday a year equates to a day rate of £431 a day.
However many agency staff were paid a day rate higher than this. For example the timesheet for invoice 311 shows sixteen agency staff paid at a day rate ranging from £472.50 + VAT a day to £817.91 + VAT a day.
On the timesheet accompanying invoice 90, Wirral Council is invoiced for a member of agency staff working in Wirral Council’s Children in Care section out of the Wallasey Locality Office for 36 hours work at £39.31 plus VAT an hour (total £1,415.18 plus VAT). However for the same member of agency staff a mileage claim for the same week was submitted for 1,800 miles at 45p a mile + VAT (which comes to a total of £810 + VAT)!
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I am sure that person employed by the agency wouldn’t be getting £39.31 an hour, they would be on min wage or there abouts, like the firm i work for i am on min wage but my boss drives around in a £150,000 car.
But looking at these invoices there’s something fishy about them to me, the same person put in a claim for travel for 1,800 miles, thats like travelling from London everyday and going back at night, or around eight to ten hours on the road depending on traffic, road works etc
Thanks for your comment.
I agree with you that the rate the agency would charge Wirral Council would be higher than what the person doing the work would get.
I too am baffled as to the 1,800 mileage claim covering a week too.
On the same timesheet for agency staff for the next 14 staff that are also working 36 hours a week, the mileage claims were much lower at 169 miles, 192.4 miles, 287.7 miles, 206 miles, 105.42 miles, 16.8 miles, 549 miles, 523 miles, 962 miles, 80 miles, 179 miles, 109 miles, 23 miles, 123 miles.
That’s an average of 251 miles. I suppose it’s always possible the claim was for 180.0 miles and someone has forgotten to insert the decimal point!