Council legal bills rocket due to agency staff use

Newcastle City Council's legal bill this year was £2.5m

Legal bills at a local authority have jumped by hundreds of thousands of pounds due to staff shortages and the poor state of council homes.

Newcastle City Council's legal department budget is expected to overrun by £773,000 this year to £2.5m.

The overspend has been blamed on a rise in the number of claims related to council home repairs as well as the use of agency staff to combat staff shortages.

Liberal Democrat councillor Gareth Kane said that the figures were "quick shocking".

A budget report revealed that repair claims on council homes in the city had risen over several years from about 50 a year to sometimes 80 in a single month, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The report said in addition to the increase in the number of cases, the complexity of some of the work had meant more "time and resource" was needed to "properly protect the council".

It also said that legal staffing was a "severe problem" in Newcastle in part because solicitors were better paid at other local authorities.

This meant recruitment campaigns led to little or no interest and resulted in the hiring of agency staff "for work that must be undertaken".

The council's deputy chief executive Matt Wilton said the prices charged for agency workers was "eye-watering".

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