Recruitment process outsourcing is "draining the talent from public sector recruitment", which will lead to lower service, poorer candidates, and increased costs, Jo Sellick, managing director of Sellick Partnership, told Recruiter.

RPOs have been used increasingly by the public sector in the past five years to cut the cost of temporary or interim contract recruitment, changing the way recruitment agencies interact with clients. Sellick said: "Previously the line manager would call an agency and talk to them about the job and the people they have. It was a two-way process. Now an RPO will email a job specification to an agency, and they are not allowed any interaction with the line manager. It stops the consultant being able to sell a candidate to a client."

Ian Wolter, chief executive of HB Human Capital Group, which owns RPO provider Matrix, told Recruiter he understands the frustration. "We would always rather the direct manager has contact with agencies, but some clients don't want the calls."

Sellick argued that removing the sales aspect of the role is draining talent from this sector: "Good people are leaving the industry and moving into other areas of recruitment. They will be replaced by bad people who have to work in a sector with lower margins. They'll find bad candidates for the end user. People won't stick, and so they'll end up going through the process again."

The RPOs, understandably, disagree. Isaac George, managing director of Xansa Recruitment, said: "This is a very extreme view. I can't see people walking away."

Wolter said even when consultants leave, they aren't necessarily replaced with poorer staff: "Where it works well is when an agency has created a team of consultants specialising in vendor managed recruitment, with a different set of skills."

RPOs also stress that the quality of candidates has not fallen. Ian Garcia, marketing director of Comensura, said: "Our system is actually designed to improve the quality of candidates we supply, using a balanced scorecard approach to get the best candidates for the job."

Wolter said he appreciated that life had become more difficult for agencies, but pointed out that the impetus for low margin solutions wasn't created by RPOs, but by public sector employers themselves: "We're meeting a need; not driving this. The Comprehensive Spending Review will add to it. Local government will have less money, and this will be passed on across the budget."