SPENDING more than £133million on temporary staff has helped Essex County Council to save money, it insists.

The council hit back after a national newspaper revealed it was the second biggest spender on agency staff in the country.

It spent £133.5million on agency staff between April 2010 and last November, including £18.4million so far this financial year, second only to Birmingham City Council, the largest authority in the country.

But deputy leader Kevin Bentley insisted cutting back on permanent workers and paying agency staff instead was helping the council to save £687million.

The Tory said: “Interim staff play a vital role in the way we offer better value for money to the taxpayer and have helped us achieve huge savings as our budget has reduced over the past five years.

“Using interim staff is part of our business model, now and in the future, as it would be in any private sector organisation seeking to operate at maximum efficiency through not hiring permanent staff for short-term projects.

“These are not people who have been taken on as a result of cuts.

“These are highly skilled people who are helping us transform the way the council operates and investing in them is helping us save money.”

Campaign group the Taxpayers’ Alliance has raised concerns local authorities are wasting money by making staff redundant and then re-employing them on more expensive temporary contracts.

But Essex County Council said it had not re-employed any staff previously on a salary of more than £70,000 over the past two years, in response to a Freedom of Information request by the Times newspaper.

It said it had rigorous controls on the employment of temporary staff and it benchmarked workers to ensure value for money.

All agency staff are employed on high-level, project-based work, where the council does not have the skills or capacity within its full-term employee base.

Mr Bentley said: “In total, so far we have saved Essex taxpayers £450million and investing in interim staff is essential in helping us stay on course to save a further £237million over the next three years.

“We have spent just over £18million on interim staff this financial year, which is around one per cent of our total spend and their value is much greater.”

Jonathan Isaby, chief executive at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: ‘This is a scandalous figure and one that needs to be justified.

“There have been all sorts of promises about bringing the cost of administering down.

“Taxpayers will be particularly concerned at the number of former employees reemployed on more expensive contracts. The lucrative revolving door needs to rapidly come to a halt.”