Yes we do – it tends to be locum work rather than permanent recruitment.
In recent times a lot of local authorities have decided to outsource part of the function of their HR departments to large RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) companies who operate a list of recruiters to supply staff. We suspect the HR people within the local authorities thought this may be easier for them and they would no longer have to bother phoning round agencies on a Friday afternoon. Having coached redundant executives via the Jobcentres many years ago we know that a number of HR staff from local authorities were made redundant following their decisions to outsource their own jobs!
These types of arrangements have made it harder for smaller agencies to stay profitable when undertaking local authority work, as the middle men now cream off rather a lot of the profit, and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has chosen to stay well away from these contracts for the time being. Add to this the crazy way a lot of local authorities implement IR35 (a particularly onerous piece of tax legislation applied to locum work) to every vacancy rather than checking each one and it is really an area we have stayed well away from over the years.
However local authorities do occasionally look outside these frameworks and you will see locum local authority vacancies on our sites from time to time.
