Agency staff

The request was partially successful.

Dear Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland),

Please provide me with information relating to the amounts spent by the HSC Business Services Organisation for staff currently recruited and employed within the Payroll Service Centre (PSC) by recruitment agencies. Please provide this information for each individual staff member that is currently employed within PSC in a table format using the following column headers:

Column A Job Title
Column B Banding
Column C Amount paid per month to recruitment agency
Column D Amount paid per month to staff member

Please can you also confirm whether or not the recruitment of staff by PSC through recruitment agencies is subjected to any kind of scrutiny process.

I trust that the above column headers allow for an appropriate level of anonymity.

Yours faithfully,

L Greenvale

FOI BSO, Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland)

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Dear Requestor,
Please find attached a formal acknowledgement of your recent Freedom of Information request (FOI_1033).

Regards

BSO Corporate Services

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Caryn Kirkpatrick, Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland)

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Dear L Greenvale

 

Please find attached a formal response to your recent FOI request.

 

Regards

 

BSO Corporate Services

 

 

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Dear Caryn Kirkpatrick,

Your public interest test was not provided. Please provide this document to enable me to review same.

My original request also asked for BSO to confirm whether or not the recruitment of staff by PSC through recruitment agencies is subjected to any kind of scrutiny process. Can BSO advise whether or not there is an intention to respond to this aspect of my request.

Yours sincerely,

L Greenvale

Caryn Kirkpatrick, Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland)

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Dear L Greenvale

Apologies please see the attached Public Interest Test.

Kind Regards

BSO Corporate Services

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Caryn Kirkpatrick, Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland)

“This email is covered by the disclaimer found at the end of the message.”

________________________________

Dear L Greeenvale

We have passed your email to Payroll Services Centre, who shall deal with your request.

Regards

BSO Corporate Services

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Dear Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland),

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland)'s handling of my FOI request 'Agency staff'.

As I have waited a full two months now for a satisfactory response to my request I feel that the only way forward is to request an internal review. For your convenience my issues with the handling of my request are laid out below:

1) Your formal response provides me with a list of current (at the time of request) agency members of staff employed by Payroll Shared Services. Can you confirm that this list is inclusive of the current interim head of payroll shared services? It should be noted that the Business Services Organisation's Annual Report and Accounts (http://www.hscbusiness.hscni.net/pdf/Cer...) states on page 120 that the organisation had made no expenditure on external consultants or for 'Off Payroll Staff Resources'. This would indicate to me that the interim head of payroll shared services is either a permanent member of staff (which would negate the 'interim' reference in the job title) or recruited via a recruitment agency.

2) Your formal response advises that agency staff are paid in line with 'Agenda for Change' terms and conditions. Can you confirm that this is still the case if the interim head of payroll shared services is in fact not a permanent member of staff? If so would it be possible to obtain the information for this member of staff in the same format (by Band) that you have already provided for other agency staff in your formal response?

3) My original request also asked if you could confirm if the recruitment of agency staff by Payroll Shared Services is subjected to any kind of scrutiny process. This was not answered (or even acknowledged) in your formal response. This was reiterated by myself on 19th April 2019 and was again not answered, rather I was passed off to the Payroll Shared Services Centre who I was advised would deal with my request. Can you confirm if doing this is the normal procedure in line with your organisations Freedom of Information policy and can you finally provide a response to this aspect of my request.

4) Your formal response advises that the release of amounts paid to recruitment agencies is exempt. Surely your organisation could have made at least some attempt to anonymise the information to at lease partially respond to this aspect of my request? Could the names of recruitment agencies not have been anonymised?

5) Upon receipt (albeit delayed) of the public interest test referenced in your formal response, I would like to raise my concerns as to how a public service would favour the 'good commercial relations with other parties' i.e. recruitment agencies, over how public money is spent. What was also surprising was the somewhat unbalanced test which failed to include any reference to openness or transparity to how public money is spent in the test's 'in favour of disclosing information' column. Surely releasing such information into the public domain would help to ensure that tax payers money is not being squandered. Also, as a matter of principle, should a publicly funded body have 'good commercial relations' with any privately owned business?

I hope that the above issues with the processing of my request can be resolved and I very much look forward to receiving your timely response.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...

Yours faithfully,

L Greenvale

FOI BSO, Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland)

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Dear L Greenvale

I write to acknowledge your request for review. A panel will now be convened, and we will write to you with the result of their deliberations in due course.

Regards,
BSO Corporate Services

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FOI BSO, Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland)

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Dear L Greenvale

 

Please find, attached, a Formal Response Letter to your request for a
review of the outcome of the above Freedom of Information request.

 

Kind regards,

 

BSO Corporate Services

 

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