James Stevenson, who took over as managing director at the beginning of 2010, told Recruiter: “Irrespective of the new government, there will be an increase in the use of temps.”

Stevenson explained that because of pressure on budgets and the need to get value for money public sector temporary staff would become increasingly attractive.
Public sector organisations would not want to replace permanent staff with permanent staff because the cost of pensions and other benefits made them “very expensive”, he explained.

Stevenson added that he didn’t expect massive cuts in staffing levels in the public sector. “25% cuts are just not going to happen: the unions are not going to stand for it.”

And he predicted while there would be cuts, these would be largely confined to head offices rather than to front line services.

Stevenson said that the public sector would continue to be the mainstay of his company, but within that it planned to further diversify into sectors such as education and further education, the NHS and health, and technical and computer services.

Stevenson said the target was to double Morgan’s Hunt’s £100m turnover within three to five years.

“We don’t expect to be an Adecco overnight, but we want to compete with the bigger players.”