Scottish Forestry spend on recruitment agencies: FOI release

Information requested

Variety of information on recruitment agency costs.

Questions and answers as detailed in reponse.

Response

Request: Agency staff

1. Please advise the total spend on recruitment agencies in the 2022-2023 financial year?

£301k.

• Please breakdown both spend on the agency that finds candidates for job vacancies and agencies that supply temporary staff?

100% of this spend was on agencies that supply temporary staff.

2. Please advise what the temporary agency spend for admin, call centre, data processing and clerical roles in the 2022-2023 financial year?

£9k.

3. Please advise what the temporary agency spend for roles such as warehouse, catering and cleaners in the 2022-2023 financial year?

£0

4. Please advise what the permanent agency spend has been in the 2022-2023 financial year?

£0

Request: Compensation payments

1. The total amount spent on compensation payments in the financial year 2022-23?

£6k

2. The total spent on rectifying errors in the financial year 2022-23?

£0

Request: Fraud Losses

1. In the financial year 2022-2023 how much has money been lost as a result of fraud?

£0

2. In the financial year 2022-2023 how much has been spent to retrieve money lost to fraud?

£0

Request: Staff Costs

1. The total financial costs of overtime in the financial year 2022–23?

£39K

2. The total financial costs to recruit staff as a result of resignation and dismissal in the financial year 2022-2023

We are able to quantify the cost of recruitment resulting from resignation and dismissal to be approximately £13,924 for the financial year 2022/23. The total cost of all recruitment was around £16,222, if we were to also include recruitment to newly created positions (i.e. recruitment not arising as a result of resignation or dismissal).

These figure include the costs of advertising job vacancies externally and the financial support provided to existing staff who relocate their home or undertake additional travel after securing a new position within SF. Where jobs are recruited to internally, we would not incur advertising costs, but as for all vacancies would still incur the additional costs such as staff time spent preparing job descriptions, shortlisting and interviewing candidates, and inducting newly recruited staff. As we do not capture or quantify these costs at present, we are unable to confirm figures for these.

3. The total financial costs spent on recruitment agencies currently being used for the supply of agency staff in the financial year 2022–23?

£301k

4. The total financial costs spent on redundancy payments in the financial year 2022–23?

£0

Request: Public relations and communications

1. For the years 2022-2023 how much was spent on external companies to handle public relations and communications? Please provide:

• The total cost 2022-2023 financial year.
• The amount of money paid to each firm (including VAT)

Scottish Forestry’s public relations and communications duties are undertaken by in-house staff. In 2022-23 £4,644 was paid to 3x1 Communications to provide workload cover whilst a member of the in-house communications team was working on a priority project in addition to their usual remit.

2. For the years 2022-2023, how much was spent social media advertising, including a breakdown by year and by form of social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)

Scottish Forestry social media management is undertaken by in-house staff and no paid advertising was used in 2022-23.

Request: Written off assets

1. For the years 2022-2023 what was the financial loss on written off inventory and IT equipment.

£0

2. For the years 2022-2023 what was the cost of replacing/fixing broken or out of date IT equipment.

£0

3. How much was spent in severance pay in the years 2022-2023.

£0

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.