How Should Councils Procure Interim Staff Through Compliant Procurement?

Councils often need professional capability on an interim or short-term basis to maintain essential services, address skills gaps and support transformation programmes. Local Government Reorganisation is only increasing this pressure. Local authorities are being asked to maintain day-to-day delivery while simultaneously redesigning structures, systems, and operating models. It’s a lot, and the ongoing challenge is to secure the right expertise quickly without compromising procurement compliance, value for money or commercial control.

The team at Bloom has written these guidelines for buyers who need to procure interim professionals for councils. To help, it explains how to define the requirement, select an appropriate route to market and maintain compliance, value for money and commercial control throughout the assignment. It is aimed at professional services rather than more general temporary labour procurement, but similar lessons apply to both. It explores what to consider before delving into the interim staff market and how using an established procurement framework can support compliance with rules and regulations.

Why Councils Use Interim Professional Services

Employing professionals on an interim or short-term basis should always be a strategic choice. It should be driven proactively to access specific skills and additional delivery capacity when needed most. It should certainly never simply be a way to conduct recruitment more quickly, cut red tape, or avoid scrutiny.

You will, however, often see legitimate use of interim professional services in the following areas.

• programme and project management
• organisational change
• workforce planning
• finance and HR expertise
• procurement and commercial support
• legal and governance expertise
• digital, data and technology specialists
• estates and property professionals
• communications support
• service redesign and transformation

Appointments in these categories can often address time-bound operational pressures and be done in a matter of weeks. Others may last two to three years, but be linked to fixed-term projects with no longer-term view. You will often see the latter in councils delivering complex transformation programmes or developing a future operating model, as is often the case with LGR projects.

The central question surrounding interim professional services is not simply whether a council needs more people. Apart from the fact that the answer to that question is typically a constant yes, buyers should establish the required outcome for a procurement. Which capabilities are missing? What temporary resources are the most appropriate for securing them? What does success look like?

Interim Professional Support, Specialist Placements, or Consultancy Support?

Before starting a procurement exercise, councils should clearly define the type of support they need. This support will normally fall into one of three categories: interim professional support, specialist placements or consultancy work. Each has its own features and benefits, of course, but also comes with slightly different compliance requirements.

Interim Professional Support

The most straightforward option is often hiring a professional to provide support on an interim basis. They will usually work under the council’s direction and supervision, often filling a specified role or supporting an existing team. An interim professional may, unsurprisingly, come through an appropriate agency. In which case, the relevant employment governance requirements must also be considered. It is important to note that government guidance states that temporary agency workers can become entitled to equal treatment in relation to basic employment and working conditions after completing 12 weeks in a role. For longer engagements, councils should ensure that any rights arising under the Agency Workers Regulations are understood and managed appropriately.

Interim Specialist Placement

Interim specialists are likely to take full responsibility for an entire defined function rather than be task-led. Suitable roles might include an Interim Transformation Director, for example, an Interim Finance Manager, or an Interim Head of HR. Good governance depends on clarity around roles, responsibilities and durations. Interim placements that become open-ended, or those with role descriptions open to misinterpretation, are often cited as poor recruitment practices.

Consultancy Work

A professional services consultant or consultancy business is normally engaged to deliver defined outcomes, rather than simply provide an individual to fill a position. The supplier may provide a specialist team, manage the work and remain accountable for agreed deliverables. This is rarely directly aligned to the procurement of personnel or recruitment, even on a temporary basis. Consultancy input ought to be sourced based on an agreed scope of work and deliverables. It may be that the work is conducted by an individual, but procurement should be framed by consultancy service outcomes.

These three arrangements may look similar, but they all entail different procurement, contractual, and management considerations. Councils should determine which suits their needs before proceeding to procure interim or short-term support.

Start With A Clearly Defined Requirement

A robust specification is one of the most important foundations of a compliant and successful procurement process. Before approaching suppliers of interim solutions, buyers should clearly document the problem they need to address, the outcomes and deliverables they expect, and the skills and experience required to deliver. A written specification should also define the intended duration of the assignment, who will manage the individual or team, and any other relevant features, such as the work location and any relevant security, safeguarding, or background issues. All this should be included, alongside the available budget, the measures that will be used to assess performance and the arrangements for transferring knowledge to the permanent team.

For significant projects such as the transformational work associated with LGR programmes, councils should also consider how the requirement may evolve as it progresses. Early-stage support may focus on programme design, governance, and workforce planning, for example, while later phases may involve service redesign, implementation, operational cover, or specialist delivery resources. Building appropriate flexibility into contracts can help the council respond to changing needs while retaining control of the assignment.

Select An Appropriate Route To Market

Any professional services procurement route should reflect the value, complexity and nature of the tasks required, as well as the council’s own contract procedure rules. For procurements covered by the Procurement Act 2023, contracting authorities must also follow the relevant statutory requirements.

Councils can choose to conduct a new competitive procurement or use an appropriate existing framework. An existing framework, of course, provides an existing route to market and suppliers whose suitability has already been assessed and proven. Using an existing framework does not remove the buyer’s responsibilities. The council must confirm that it is entitled to use the framework, the required services are within its scope, and the proposed contract is within any relevant value or duration limits. The council is also responsible for checking that the correct award processes are followed, decisions are documented appropriately, and applicable publication and transparency requirements are met.

Award With A Competition Or Not?

An award of an interim capacity or capability contract without competition may be suitable where the framework permits it and has an appropriate objective method for identifying the best supplier. A non-contested award should not be confused with an unrestricted direct award to a supplier of the council’s choosing. The latter has a different set of governance rules.

In most cases, councils will want to run a fair competition to find the right interim staffing solution at the right cost. If there are several suppliers who can meet the requirement, why wouldn’t a buyer want to evaluate different approaches, expertise and commercial proposals?

Competition may be particularly appropriate for complex or high-value assignments where delivery methodology, sector experience and team composition are as important as day rates. Whichever route is used, the council should be able to justify why the selected approach was permitted and appropriate.

Evaluate More Than The Day Rate

One of the easiest traps to fall into when looking for interim or short-term professional service solutions is assuming the lowest day rate represents the best value. For example, staff with relevant local government experience may mobilise more quickly, require less supervision, and be better equipped to manage political, operational, and regulatory complexity. Their relevance might come at a premium, but they ultimately offer more value. A cheaper procurement option that provides staff who lack the right experience may save in the short term, but may take longer to become effective.

As well as relevant experience and understanding, it pays to assess proposed approaches and methodologies, mobilisation plans and alignment with proposed timeframes, availability and knowledge transfer arrangements. Total fee structures, as opposed to hourly or daily rates, may vary, and commercial terms may also affect overall value. LGR projects are also duty-bound to consider wider social value in comparing bids. Buyers should assess the overall value and delivery risk rather than viewing the hourly or daily rate in isolation.

Maintain Control Throughout The Assignment

Compliance does not stop when a contract is awarded. Councils need to undertake proportionate contract management throughout any engagement. This should include clearly defined reporting arrangements, performance measures, financial controls and processes for addressing underperformance. Useful controls may include an agreed mobilisation plan with approved timesheet or milestone processes, regular performance reviews, monitoring of outcomes and deliverables, and a specified knowledge transfer and exit plan.

Buyers should track the cumulative spend throughout the engagement, especially if it is likely to extend by design or due to delays. Poorly managed extensions can materially change the scale of an assignment and are an easy way to inflate spending.

Consider Employment Status And Worker Protections

The governance of employment is every bit as complex and nuanced as that of public sector procurement. It is rarely safe to assume that the contractual labels attached to an interim or temporary staff engagement are successfully aligned with employment law or even employment best practices.

Councils should consider whether their arrangement involves a temporary agency worker, an individual operating through an intermediary, a self-employed interim office holder or a supplier delivering an outsourced service from an organisational supplier. Each category comes with its own set of considerations. Relevant examples include:

• agency workers regulations
• off-payroll working rules
• employment status
• pension responsibilities
• safeguarding
• right-to-work checks
• information security
• data protection
• professional indemnity and other insurance

Given the complexities of public sector staffing frameworks in general, it’s important that procurement teams work with HR, legal, and finance colleagues at the outset of any buying activity, rather than addressing these issues after a preferred supplier has been selected and solutions may be sub-optimal.

How Bloom Supports Interim Capacity & Capability Requirements

Bloom helps public sector organisations access specialist professional services through a managed, compliant and efficient route to market. Through the NEPRO Three framework, councils can draw on a network of more than 6,500 pre-approved suppliers, around 75% of which are SMEs. This gives buyers access to specialist capability across areas including organisational change, commercial services, digital transformation, finance, workforce, estates and other professional service categories.

Bloom’s project data shows that demand for temporary and interim support is already well established. Since 2020, Bloom has supported 93 temporary labour projects with a combined purchase order value of £10.35 million. These projects have involved 39 public-sector clients, including 61 local government assignments, and have been delivered by 61 different suppliers.

Much of this demand has centred on transformation and workforce solutions. Fifty projects have fallen within Organisational and Change Management, while a further 43 have focused on Staff Recruitment and Selection. The figures demonstrate both the breadth of interim labour required across the public sector and the particularly strong demand within local government.

Bloom provides more than access to a supplier network. Its managed service can support buyers from the initial development of the requirement through supplier selection, contracting, performance monitoring and project close-out. This gives councils a flexible way to secure specialist capability while maintaining visibility over delivery, supplier performance, expenditure and compliance throughout the assignment.

Building Capacity Without Committing Too Early

The transformation programmes driven by Local Government Reorganisation are creating workforce balance difficulties for many councils. Essential services must keep running, but local authorities may not have much foresight into their permanent futures. What will their organisation look like in a year’s time, five years, or ten years? Recruiting permanent teams too early, in this context, can reduce flexibility. Yet, waiting until every structural decision has been made can leave critical programmes without enough capacity. Interim and short-term contracts are well suited to bridging this gap. When councils treat these resources as part of a deliberate response to LGR, rather than a last-minute response to an urgent vacancy, the results can be very impressive. Success comes from defining the required outcomes, choosing the appropriate procurement route, evaluating quality and cost, and actively managing the engagement once it begins. With the right controls in place, councils can secure the specialist expertise they need at pace while maintaining compliance, value for money and accountability.

Bloom provides a managed route to market through NEPRO Three, helping councils access specialist interim professional services. From defining requirements and identifying suitable suppliers to contracting, performance monitoring, and project close-out, Bloom helps buyers maintain visibility and control throughout staffing assignments.

Speak to Bloom about securing the specialist capacity needed to maintain service delivery and keep transformation programmes moving.

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