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Staff recruitment processes at Caerphilly County Borough Council are “slow” and should be improved, a committee has heard.

Cllr Judith Pritchard told joint scrutiny committee colleagues that management has to “try and fill in the gaps” while waiting for vacancies to be filled.

A new report shows the number of council staff grew slightly last year, with 1,040 people joining the local authority and 858 leaving.

But some departments are struggling to fill vacancies and offer competitive salaries, and are facing future issues around an ageing workforce.

There are particular challenges in recruiting people for the care and trades sectors, the report shows.

The council acknowledges there “have been and continue to be national recruitment challenges”, and has appointed a new recruitment team to improve its procedures.

But Cllr Pritchard told the committee, on Monday October 28, she felt the “methods of recruiting people are very slow”.

She said many prospective candidates for more hands-on roles might prefer a physical application form rather than an online process, but said some people “can’t get a paper copy”.

“It’s a big deterrent if they’ve got to get somebody to fill in the form online for them,” Cllr Pritchard said. “I think it’s a bit demeaning.”

Cllr Gary Enright also raised concerns about long recruitment processes, telling the committee it could “take hours” for people to apply for jobs because they have to follow a so-called “STAR method” of demonstrating their skills and experience.

He asked whether it was necessary for all applications to follow this procedure.

Lynne Donovan, the council’s head of people services, said the local authority’s policy is to “measure all our applications in a standard way” to “make sure we are recruiting fairly”.

Turning to Cllr Pritchard’s comments, Ms Donovan said all job applications were online “but if that causes any issues we are able to issue paper copies” of forms.

In response to claims the council should be quicker to handle applications, she added: “We’ve got a safe recruitment process and that can take some time.”

This can often include hold-ups while waiting for applicants to provide references, Ms Donovan told the committee.

The council report shows its social services department recorded a “strong” performance last year despite “ongoing recruitment and retention challenges across frontline services”.

It described those hiring issues as “significant” and said there are increasing examples of Caerphilly “falling behind other local authorities in terms of salaries”.

A similar situation has been reported in the housing department, which is “struggling to recruit surveyors”.

“There is also a risk of further pressures due to retirement age and many are leaving for higher salaries in housing associations,” the council said in its report.

With a “significant proportion” of the department’s workforce over the age of 55, “the risk of retirement and knock on impact to the efficiency of the team will put pressure on recruitment particularly for trades staff”, it added.

A current vacancy rate of 20% among trades staff, if left unchecked, could mean a “fundamental review of the way we do business”, the council said, adding that a “recent recruitment drive has not delivered the right level of applications that we require”.