02-05-2025
Cumberland Council staff recruitment and retention concerns raised
THE Issue of staff recruitment and retention within Cumberland Council was raised at a meeting this week.
Members of the full council met at the Civic Centre in Carlisle on Tuesday (April 29) and, during the time set aside for questions, councillor Trevor Allison (Dalston and Burgh, Conservative) raised the subject.
He asked: 'Recruitment and retention was identified as one of the principal features of the CIPFA Report on the Cumberland authority's financial position.
'Their report leading to the statutory council meeting with the external auditors, identified the need to recruit additional experienced and qualified financial staff.
'At the same time, the regular Cumberland internal updates show management's commitment to staffing is likely to remain a feature for some time to come.
'Given this pressure in what is still our formative years for the authority, this should not be at the expense of monitoring and addressing in a fair and equitable manner, the issue of absenteeism.
'High absence levels are costly to the authority and local taxpayers, especially if it involves resorting to agency staff to cover absence, as distinct from vacancies. It is reasonable to assume that this will still reflect in some measure the statistics of the four legacy authorities.'
His questions were:
Have we adopted a unified process for recording, analysing and dealing with absence, and are the figures trending up or down?
What is the current sick absence rate in days per working year and the ratio of long term to short term absence?
Councillor Barbara Cannon (St Michaels, Labour), the financial planning and assets portfolio holder, said sickness absence data was a combination of short term and long term absences and it provided 'monthly snapshot'. She added: 'The rate has begun to decelerate.'
