Barnet's bad economics - Make people redundant while spending £1m a month on agency staff.

I constantly scratch my head at the way Barnet Council is run. Suppliers payments for August show that the council spent £996,000 on agency staff in August. That is down from £1.7 million spent  on agency staff in July but probably reflects that Capita were paid £700,00 to use their staff (part of the £14.7 million advance payment Capita received in July). What really irks me is that Capita start the consultation on the redundancy process tomorrow. So while they are making loyal staff,  who have a great deal of experience and knowledge, redundant they continue to pay temporary staff who have no continuity or in depth knowledge £1 million a month. Surely the logic would suggest that the first thing to cut is agency staff given their costs include a percentage of profit paid to the agency (Comensura) and try and redeploy as many council staff into those posts as possible. But in Barnet, logic is not something that seems to feature prominently in the way the Council is run.