To authorise the Chair to sign the Minutes of the meetings of the Licensing and General Purposes Committee held on 4 April and 16 May 2022 as correct records of the proceedings.

The Chair was authorised to sign the Minutes of the meetings of the Licensing and General Purposes Committee held on 4 April and 16 May 2022 as correct records of the proceedings.

The Chair to ask if any Member present is substituting for another Member and, if so, to declare his/her name as substitute Member and the name of the absent Member.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors G.S. Browne, G.C. Curtis, A.S. Mier and S.J. Errington.

It was noted that Councillors Byrne, Gray and Mrs Kirby-Green were present as substitutes for Councillors Errington, Mier and Browne respectively.

To receive any disclosure by Members of personal and disclosable pecuniary interests in matters on the agenda, the nature of any interest and whether the Member regards the personal interest as prejudicial under the terms of the Code of Conduct.  Members are reminded of the need to repeat their declaration immediately prior to the commencement of the item in question.

There were no disclosures of interest.

Consideration was given to the report of the Human Resources Manager on the staff pay award for 2022/23.  In April 2022, the Licensing and General Purposes Committee (L&GP) met to consider the pay award for 2022/23; at that time, the national pay award was unknown.  Concerns had been raised regarding the difficulties the Council was experiencing recruiting professional staff, which was also a national issue.  A pay proposal of 2.5% or £500, whichever was greater, to be applied to the current pay scales with the rate decreasing as it was applied to the upper pay scales, was agreed and sent to Staff Side/UNISON for consideration.  The total cost to the Council would be £113,000 per annum, which was affordable.  Staff Side/UNISON’s response was detailed at Appendix A to the report.

Staff Side/UNISON had requested consideration of either £2,000 or an increase in line with the current rate of RPI, whichever was the higher for employees (aligned with UNISON NJC Pay Claim 2022/23).  This proposal would cost £930,000 which was £820,000 higher than the funding envelope and would put significant pressure on the Council’s budget which could result in redundancies.

Members were advised that the National pay offer being made to unions was currently an increase of £1,925 on all NJC pay scales and included a proposal of 4.04% increase on all allowances, as well as an increase of one days’ annual leave entitlement from April 2023.  The cost of this would be approximately £465,000 which was £355,000 higher than the funding envelope.

Consideration was also given to a one-off amount of £500 plus a 1% increase on all pay scales.  This option was more affordable, would not overlap pay scales, reduce the risk of losing valuable staff and put the Council in a more secure position regarding recruitment opportunities.  It would ensure equal and fair pay across the authority and protect a large increase in the base budget.  The cost would be £196,000 which was £85,000 higher than the funding envelope.  

During the discussions, the following points were noted:

•           no commitment had been received from central Government that any funding would be granted to meet a pay award.  Any award made over the allocated budget could well result in cuts to jobs and services in order to approve a balanced budget that was not reliant on taking cash from the Council’s Reserves;

•           Members suggested that the Chief Executive write to central Government to request funding be provided to all Local Authorities (LA) to enable pay awards to be met;

•           most LA’s pay awards were from 1 April, so if Members opted to backdate to 1 April, the Council would be brought in line.  The base budget would not be affected as all costings in the report were shown as a full year cost;

•           Members suggested giving consideration to adding a working from home allowance to the more affordable option of paying all staff a one-off amount of £500 plus a 1% increase on their pay  ...  view the full minutes text for item LG22/8.