Agenda and draft minutes

To approve as a correct record the Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 17 September 2019.

The Minutes of the meeting held on 17 September 2018 were approved as a true and correct record and signed by the Chairman.

In relation to item 6, Implementing the 2019 Pay Award, Councillor Mollie Lock noted that the Personnel Committee had agreed to Option B and that she had raised at the time her concerns about the impact that could have on schools’ budgets. Robert O’ Reilly accepted that as this was a national pay award it would be applied to all support staff in schools. Although he acknowledged that it could have an impact schools were, however, responsible for managing their own budgets. They were aware that this was going to happen as it was the second phase of a two year deal.

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 1^st April 2019.

Robert O’Reilly presented a report which sought Council’s approval of the Statutory Pay Policy Statement for publication from 1^st April 2019 in accordance with s38 of the Localism Act 2011. As part of the process the Personnel Committee were invited to comment on the report prior to Council approval.

The statement should set out the policies in relation to:

·         Remuneration of its chief officers;

·         The remuneration of its lowest paid employees (and the definition and reasons for defining it);

·         The relationship between the remuneration of its chief officers and those who were not chief officers.

It was noted that the Pay Policy Statement for 2019 had been updated to reflect the new National Joint Council pay scales which would be implemented on 1^st April 2019. The ratio between the highest and lowest paid employee would be 8.52 to 1 which was well within the maximum ratio of 20 to 1 which was set out in the Hutton Review of Fair Pay. In response to a query the Head of HR stated that it was unlikely that anyone in a local authority would exceed the maximum recommended ratio.

Councillor Richard Crumly queried if the threshold for taking redundancy payments to the Executive (£10k) was too high. Robert O’ Reilly stated while this could be revisited it was the Executive that had set the threshold so it was unlikely that they would want to see it reduced. Following a discussion the Committee agreed that the threshold should remain at £10k.

Councillor Crumly queried whether it was appropriate for Heads of Service to be able to approve severance costs associated with sickness absence. Robert O’ Reilly stated that when this was previously discussed it was agreed that the Council should adopt as humane an approach as possible in this area. Councillor Crumly queried what level of payments could be made. Officers explained that this depended on a number of factors including salary level and length of service. Councillor Crumly asked if the Council made use of section 203 agreements. Robert O’ Reilly stated that the Council made use of proper settlement agreements in order to protect itself which included confidentiality clauses where appropriate. 

Councillor Crumly noted that paragraph 3.8.3 stated that employees who left the Council with a redundancy or other severance payment ‘will not normally be re-engaged by the council within two years of the termination date’. He questioned the need for including the word normally as he did not believe the Council should reemploy them within that time frame. He asked for a list of the number of times this had happened  In the last two years. The Head of HR stated that he could not recall any instances when this had happened in the last two years. He provided examples of when  it might be appropriate to re-engage staff and the Committee accepted the explanation and the reasons for the wording. Robert O’ Reilly noted that at the time the policy had been adopted a benchmarking exercise had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.