FOI_26-241 Temporary agency worker spend

Date of response: 14 October 2026

We have now considered your request of 21 September 2026 for the following information:

For the most recently completed financial year, please provide:

Question 1. Total expenditure on temporary and agency workers.

Question 2. A breakdown by department or staff category, where centrally held.

Question 3. The names of external staffing agencies or suppliers used and the amount paid to each, where readily available.

Question 4. Whether the University operates an internal temporary staffing, worker bank or student staffing service and, if so:

• its name;

• the number of workers or assignments;

• the total payroll or assignment value processed; and

• any administration fee or percentage mark-up charged.

Our response:

We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.

Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to the expenditure on temporary and agency workers, the department or staff category, the names of suppliers use and the amount paid to each.

We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.

'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.

Information relating to temporary staffing employed by the University and expenditure on temporary workers is held within our Finance department and our Human Resource Services. There is no central record of where this information is held.

For the period outlined in your request we have identified 1715 agency invoices posted within our Finance ledger which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual invoice/ledger manually.

We have calculated it would take 5 minutes per records, or 142 hours, to locate and manually interrogate each individual ledger and cross reference with files held regarding where those staffing were allocated (department). Which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.

Under section 16 of the Act, and to assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we could provide a response for expenditure on staffing, names of agencies used and departments, for one calendar month (questions 1, 2 and 3) and a full response to question 4.

Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.

We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.

We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.