EXCLUSIVE
More than £1.8 million in overtime has been paid to just 50 council staff over the past two years, The Edinburgh Reporter can reveal.
Factoring in employers’ National Insurance and pension contributions the cost to the City of Edinburgh Council is estimated at between £2.1million and £2.5 million.
Grade 5 employees – typically administrative, clerical and customer service staff – top the list of highest earners, accounting for 25% of the overtime bill, or around £474,000.
Twelve Grade 5 staff each topped up annual incomes of between £29,000 and £33,000 with an average of £39,500 in overtime over the two-year period. The highest individual council overtime earner was also a Grade 5 employee who was paid an additional £26,151 and £31,094 or £57,244 over the two years.
Four Grade 4 staff being paid the Living Wage – typically cleaning, catering and school transport workers – earned almost £157,000 in overtime, averaging around £39,000 per person over two years.
The second-highest band of overtime earners was Grade 6 staff, including senior administrators, housing officers and environmental health officers, who on average earned £38,327 over 24 months in addition to typical salaries of between £33,000 and £39,000. This 12-strong group accounted for 24% of the overtime bill or £460,000.
Craft 6 staff – skilled manual trades such as electricians, plumbers and joiners – were the third-highest overtime earners. Eleven frontline workers responsible for repairs, maintenance and emergency response across council services, shared between them £373,000 in overtime or around £34,000 each, over the 24-month period.
The overtime list also revealed that one Grade 8 staffer, typically a team leader or mid-career professional paid between £46,000 and £54,000 annually, collected an additional £37,608 in overtime over the two years.
The alarming statistics point to a systematic reliance on overtime to plug gaps in services. Most of the grades – 4LW, 5 and 6 – are non-managerial frontline roles yet account for almost 90% of the total paid out to the top 50 overtime earners.
Based on the Council’s own pay rates, the overtime payments to frontline grades alone equate to roughly 14 full-time posts over two years. Public workforce reports estimate that City of Edinburgh Council spend around £950,00 per month on overtime and between £11 million to £12 million each year.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will be seriously concerned at the overreliance on overtime at Edinburgh council. These sorts of practices are very expensive and should only be used when necessary.
“Given local government suffers from absenteeism, shorter working hours compared to the private sector, and work from home and work from abroad policies that harm productivity, it is particularly galling. Even more maddening is the fact that City of Edinburgh Council is considering bringing in a four day week.
“Bosses at this local authority should be focused on boosting productivity to limit the amount of overtime needed.”
A spokesperson for the City of Edinburgh Council said: “As highlighted in the Council’s Strategic Workforce Plan 2024-27, in addition to substantive posts, we require a flexible element to how we deploy our workforce, and this includes the use of overtime, casual workers, and agency workers.
“The use of this flexible workforce enables us to maintain high quality services at peak time such as the Edinburgh Festival or to cover short term absence to ensure we deliver best value.”
