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Agenda, decisions and minutes

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Contact: Moira Fraser / Steve Mann 

Items
No. Item

4.

Minutes pdf icon PDF 97 KB

To approve as  correct records the Minutes of the meetings of the Committee held on 05 October 2015 and 19 May 2016.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Minutes of the meetings held on 05 October 2015 and 19 May 2016 were approved as true and correct records and signed by the Chairman subject to the inclusion of the following amendment:

Meeting 05 October 2016: Item 5 (Review of the Redundancy Multiplier) Page 6, Paragraph 2:

Councillor Mollie Lock asked that the words “but added that she thought that it was unfair for employees that had worked at the Council for many years to suffer as a result of the decision.” be inserted after “Councillor Mollie Lock concurred with this view.”

It was noted that as Councillor Mollie Lock was the only Member of the current Committee that was also present at the October 2015 meeting, the Chairman asked her to confirm that they were an accurate record of the meeting. Councillor Lock confirmed that subject to the inclusion of the amendment set out above they were and, on that basis, Members voted to approve the amended minutes.

5.

Declarations of Interest

To remind Members of the need to record the existence and nature of any Personal, Disclosable Pecuniary or other interests in items on the agenda, in accordance with the Members’ Code of Conduct.

Minutes:

There were no declarations of interest received.

6.

Review of Discretionary Compensation for Redundancy (PC3139) pdf icon PDF 60 KB

Purpose: To consider a change to the way in which the Council uses its discretion to enhance redundancy payments.

 

Additional documents:

Decision:

Resolved that the Officer recommendation to reduce the multiplier used by West Berkshire Council to calculate redundancy compensation payments from 2 times to 1.5 times the statutory number of weeks’ pay with effect from 1 September 2016 be accepted, subject to a review taking place once the Government’s legislation affecting payments made to public sector employees upon the termination of their employment was enacted.

 

This decision is eligible to be ‘called-in’.  However, if the decision has not been ‘called-in’ by 5.00pm on 7 July 2016, then it will be implemented.

Minutes:

Prior to the start of the discussion Councillor Pamela Bale stated that, as with any organisation she had worked at, the staff at West Berkshire Council (WBC) were one of its greatest assets. However, Members had to balance the needs of the organisation, the requirements of staff and the Council’s financial position. This situation was exacerbated as the Council did not manufacture goods that it could sell but was instead reliant on income from Council Tax, Business Rates and Central Government Grants.

The Council had recently had to make a number of difficult decisions in order to balance income and expenditure. The decision presented to Members at this meeting was not an easy one for them to make but any costs incurred by the Council, including staff costs, had to be realistic and affordable. She stated that if Members were minded to approve the Officer’s recommendation then it should not be seen to be indicative of Members not valuing staff. The Committee was being asked to ensure that employees received a reasonable level of compensation when asked to leave the organisation.

Robert O’Reilly introduced the report which considered a change to the way in which the Council used its discretion to enhance redundancy payments. He explained that the report also addressed issues that had been raised at the October 2015 meeting including queries around augmentation and insufficient detail in the Equality Impact Assessment.

He explained that the cost of making local authority employees redundant was based on the redundancy payment (which local authorities had the discretion to enhance beyond the statutory minimum) and any costs incurred by the pension fund for automatic early retirement of pension scheme members aged 55 or over. Each local authority had to publish its policy on how it would use these discretions. The key discretions available were to calculate the payment using actual weekly pay rather than the statutory maximum (which was £479 per week in 2016), and to pay an amount up to 104 weeks’ pay (the statutory maximum was 30). Statutory redundancy pay for each individual would depend upon age and length of continuous local government service.

West Berkshire Council had initially used its discretion to use actual weekly pay and to multiply the statutory number of weeks by three (making the maximum payment 90 weeks’ pay). In 2011, it reduced the multiplier to two, making the maximum payment 60 weeks’ pay.

In Spring 2016, a survey of 33 neighbouring authorities was undertaken to establish their approach to discretionary compensation for redundancy. Twenty authorities had responded and the responses were summarised in Appendix D to the report. Practice varied in relation to using actual week’s pay, applying any enhanced weeks to volunteers for redundancy, or those who were entitled to an immediate pension, and to whether a flat rate of weeks or a multiple of the statutory number of weeks was used. A mean average ‘redundancy multiplier’ was calculated using only the 13 local authorities which used actual weekly pay and a multiple  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.