Agenda and minutes

To approve as a correct record the Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 15 October 2019.

The Minutes of the meeting held on 15 October 2019 were approved as a true and correct record and signed by the Chairman.

To remind Members of the need to record the existence and nature of any personal, disclosable pecuniary or other registrable interests in items on the agenda, in accordance with the Members’ Code of Conduct.

There were no declarations of interest received.

Purpose: To seek Council’s approval of the Statutory Pay Policy Statement for publication from 1st April 2020.

The Committee considered a report (Agenda item 4) concerning the Statutory Pay Policy 2020.

Rebecca Bird in introducing the item noted that this was an annual report which the Council, under the Localism Act 2011, was required to publish by the 01 April. The format of the report was substantially the same as previous iterations. The most notable changes pertained to the changes to the senior management structure following the report on Senior management posts of Chief Executive, Executive Director (Place), Service Director and Service Lead which was discussed at the 19 December 2019 Executive meeting.

Some of the ratio’s relating to remuneration would not be able to be updated until the pay award was agreed and this was not likely to happen before June.

Councillor Abbs queried  whether the Chief Executive’s salary had not already been agreed. Officers confirmed that changes had been agreed at the 19 December meeting but that it would not be finalised until the pay award was agreed.

Councillor Simpson asked whether the new structure was relatively cost-neutral.

Rebecca Bird commented that she had not been involved in the revisions to the senior management posts but that she understood that the changes would be cost neutral in the long term. Both the Leader and Deputy Leader had been involved with South East Employers when they had undertaken the work on the restructure.

Councillor Abbs asked whether these salaries were inclusive of the pension scheme and any other benefits as he believed that a package would be more indicative and it would also enhance transparency. Officers noted that not all employees were signed up to the pension scheme which could make the calculations difficult. The pension contributions were also adjusted on a sliding scale which could affect ratios.  Rebecca Bird said that staff were auto-enrolled onto the scheme but that they could opt out of it if they wished to do so.  Councillor Brooks asked about the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and whether there was a qualification period for this. It was agreed that some information on the Local Government Pension Scheme should be set out under a separate heading after ‘Pay ratios in the Council’ and before ‘Review’.

Councillor Brooks stated that he had issues with paragraphs 3.1.7, 3.1.9 3.13 and 3.14 and asked whether these were robust enough in their wording.

Paragraph 3.1.7 stated that ‘additional Special Recruitment Payment (SRP) of £5,000 - £8,000 may be paid to any Service Director subject to approval by Head of Paid Service in liaison with the Leader of the Council.’ Councillor Brooks queried how many of these were being paid. He was concerned that Members would not have visibility of the number of payments that were being made. Members requested that the word ‘liaison’ be replaced with the word ‘consultation’. They also asked that the number of payments be reported back to the Committee on an annual basis. Officers noted that these types of decisions should be published as Delegated Officer Decisions which would give Members  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16.

To agree a date for the next meeting.

The Committee stated that they would like to include four meetings a year on the timetable of meetings. They should take place on a Friday at 10.30am. Additional ad hoc meetings could be arranged when required. Moira Fraser agreed to circulate suggested dates outside of the meeting.