THURROCK Council leaders have agreed to extend the contract of an agency supplying it with temporary staff, despite not debating or discussing the numbers and effectively 'nodding through' an officer recommendation.

Despite winning a landslide victory in May 2026's election with a stated mandate to specifically target the council's 'skyrocketing expenditure on agency workers', cabinet members this week took less than five minutes to approve a contract paying a company, Matrix Scm Limited, substantially more than £1 million a month to provide it with temporary staff.

The council publishes records of what it has paid to suppliers and the last reported figures go back to May this year when Matrix Scm Limited was paid more than £1,273,997.

In April the figure was £1,442,914, in March it was £1,222,431, February £1,253,186 and January £1,001,401.

None of those figures, or those since May 2026, were examined, questioned or acknowledged at Wednesday's (16 September) cabinet meeting when it was agreed to continue using Matrix to recruit staff on its behalf. Matrix provides around 200 agency workers.

The workers in question appear to be essentially lower grade staff but available figures show that they are each costing the council more than £5,500 a month. While the pay received directly workers is going to be less because the premium paid to the agency, the pay works out well above the national average paid for manual staff.

Despite their election pledge to 'lift the bonnet and check out how the council engine works', Cabinet members didn't explore any figures and agreed to extend the agency worker contract to December 2027, taking note of officer warnings that frontline and specialist services could suffer without it.

At Wednesday's meeting, the report to cabinet was presented by Cllr Alex Anderson, who was briefly questioned by Cllr Sara Poyntz who said: "We are being asked to extend this contract for another year. What is the council doing to extend its reliance on agency staff and recruit more permanent employees?

Cllr Anderson delivered a stuttering replay, saying: "We have teams looking at how sections of the council looking at that and which arrangements of the council are most appropriate.

"It has to be said that although the council has a lot of temporary agency staff, in some ways, in some situations, we want those arrangements down so I don't think it's the case of a blanket 'let's get it down', we want to get it down in areas where it's appropriate to do so, that's something we will also look at and subscribe to do so."

Council leader Cllr Richard Bingley summed up, saying: "Local government and councils do depend on council contract workers and particular issues kicked in here, particularly since intervention, when maybe we became overly reliant on them but since May 26 this administration has come in with our very challenging questions around the use of contractors and consultants.

"We are developing a new policy on that which we will put through cabinet and so therefore we are looking at things like parameters around how long around how somebody can be a contractor or an agency worker before they are offered to join on a contract so there's a number of mechanisms that we can use but we do have to appreciate that this before us tonight is a business continuity issue.

"We've got good services at Thurrock Council, we're wrapping up the Civic Pride task force and going out cleaning and greening all hours, all day.

"We're getting back to normal and that does depend on full time. It depends on part-time. And it depends on consultants and contractors and they're all performing well. People are acting as a team.

"The council is reset and I'm happy to back Cllr Anderson on this."

In its last declared accounts for the year ended March 2025, Matrix Scm Limited declared a profit, after tax, of £8,499,393 on a turnover of £21,124,580.