Gloucestershire County Council office faced with 'serious' staff shortage

Gloucestershire County Council will allocate an extra £212k towards recruitment

A council office is experiencing "serious" staff shortage across their departments.

Gloucestershire County Council said there was a national shortage of workers in many sectors and employers are struggling to recruit.

The council said it is finding it hard to attract and retain qualified and experienced staff in some key roles.

Deputy leader Lynden Stowe said it is a "pretty serious problem" in quite a lot of council departments.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said he made the remarks in response to a question by opposition leader Ben Evans at a cabinet meeting on 25 January.

Mr Evans had asked what measures were being proposed in next year's budget to help the authority meet the challenge.

Mr Stowe said the council will be allocating an extra £212,000 towards recruitment.

"It is a pretty serious problem in quite a lot of our departments so anything we can do to either retain or recruit new staff we will be doing," he said.

"Sometimes that will mean being a bit creative with some of our advertising, contracts, etc.

'Hybrid working'

"We have invested short term in recruitment; in upskilling our recruitment team, improving our recruitment practice, increased our social media presence and we are about to launch a new employer brand aimed at attracting a wider pool of people.

"In recent years, we've invested in agile to enable hybrid working, in career development through the social work academy, our many apprenticeships, our 'growing great managers' programme and in our work to increase the diversity of our workforce."

Mr Stowe said the investments would "contribute to creating a working environment and culture where staff want to stay and work with us".

"There is £212k additional one-off money in the corporate resources budget to fund the additional work in the recruitment team," he added.

"The impact of the additional investment will be reviewed to consider whether this should be continued.

"Some of the money to pay for advertising comes from staffing budgets; from underspends due to the vacancies being recruited."

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