Councils must account for ‘extraordinary’ overtime pay

A freedom of information request by Margaret Mitchell MSP, Conservative member for Central Scotland, has revealed that over the last five years (2006/7 – 2010/11) Scotland's councils have paid employees nearly 3 million hours of overtime.

This overtime, which is paid at either double or triple time rate, is for environmental, land and enterprise services (which include, for example, waste management, roads, street cleaning and management of parks and golf courses) alone.

The highest number of hours totalling 590,910 was paid by North Lanarkshire Council with only 166,514 hours of this total being accounted for by public holidays. From the information provided it appears that the double time pay rate for North Lanarkshire is approximately £16 an hour. This in turn means that over the last five years this council has spent nearly £9.5 million on double time payments.

Not included in the total number of hours for councils were the figures for East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire Councils which did not provide the number of hours but the total spent on double time and triple time payments. In total Renfrewshire Council spent over £7 million pounds from 2006/07 to 2010/11.

Commenting on the information, Margaret Mitchell MSP said:

"These are extraordinarily high figures. Whilst some of the hours will be accounted for by public holidays and also extra hours attributed to services related to severe winter weather and other emergencies this does not account for all the expenditure.

"It is, therefore, up to councils to account for exactly why they decided this double time or triple time should be paid and to assure the public that these overtime payments were necessary, justifiable and represented value for money."

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