§ Lord Hogg of Cumbernauldasked Her Majesty's Government:
What was the number of directly employed persons engaged on full-time and part-time contracts in Scottish local authorities in each of the past five years.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Scottish Office (Lord Sewel)The available information, from the published results of Scottish Joint Staffing Watch surveys, is given in the table below. A revised Joint Staffing Watch survey was introduced following local government reorganisation in Scotland. Because of changes in definitions and coverage, these data are not comparable with staffing figures for earlier time periods. The footnote to the table identifies a major break in comparability in the data over the period. There was no survey in June 1996. The press release,Joint Staffing Watch—June 1997 Return—Scotland, a copy of which is available in the Library, describes the results of the survey in more detail and explains the differences between the revised surveys and earlier surveys.
>Local Authority Staffing Numbers Full Time Part Time Pre-reorganisation Joint Staffing Watch June 1993 208,741 91.532 June 1994 209,450 94,162 June 1995 208,561 96,924 New Joint Staffing Watch June 19971 189.231 103.493 Note:
1Following local government reorganisation, the new Joint Staffing Watch excludes some 7,000 staff (who were mainly full time employees) in services such as water, sewerage and the children's reporters service, who transferred from local authority control at the time of reorganisation.