THE decision to spend more than £11,000 of taxpayers’ money funding the government’s HR team attending an awards event has been questioned by the politician who heads up the Public Accounts Committee.
A freedom-of-information response showed that a total of £11,429 was spent on the Personnel Today awards, with ten employees flying to London for the black-tie presentation evening, at which they collected the HR team of the year award.
PAC chair Deputy Lyndsay Feltham said that the committee had yet to discuss the matter, but her view was that the decision raised several questions.
She said: “From a value-for-money perspective, it is very unclear what value the taxpayer would see from this expenditure – I would be interested to know if this has been the subject of a review under the government’s value-for-money programme.
“Personally, I think that the expenditure is hard to justify when some frontline and essential services are underfunded.”
Deputy Feltham said she was also concerned that morale among staff working in other sectors of government might suffer, and questioned whether it was premature to credit initiatives such as the government’s people strategy and the launch of a prioritised workforce plan.
“I think it’s quite odd to win an award for producing a policy document when the outcomes of implementing what’s in the document are not known,” she said.
The expenditure included £810 in entry fees for three award categories, another aspect questioned by Deputy Feltham.
Deputy Feltham said: “I would like to know if an offer to enter such awards was made to other areas of the organisation as it appears to be a privilege only open to the HR team.
“If applying for such awards was considered to have merits in relation to boosting staff morale and supporting recruitment and retention, why wouldn’t the HR team focus on finding public sector awards for other service areas and entering other teams for those as part of that strategy?
“Starting with themselves seems a bit wrong, particularly as we don’t know if the work awarded was successful yet.”
The government has been asked for a response to Deputy Feltham’s observations.
The JEP understands that the funding for the Personnel Today awards was not subject to the government’s value-for-money programme, and also that other departments may participate in awards events subject to the support of relevant managers.
