Pay policy

Pay Policy 2022/23 Policy Statement

1. Introduction

Under Chapter 8 of the Localism Act 2011 Local Authorities in England and Wales were required to produce a pay policy statement for 2012/13 and for each financial year thereafter, and must do so with regard to any guidance from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

Additional information is also reported in compliance with The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 (Policy Procedure paragraph 6).

In addition, this Policy must be agreed and signed off by the Full Council and be publically available.

2. Policy Objective

The purpose of the Pay Policy is to provide transparency with regard to the Council's approach to the setting of pay for all its employees and therefore identifies:

• The methods by which salaries of all employees are determined
• The details and levels of remuneration and any other benefits of the Council's most senior staff.
• The relationship between the remuneration of its most senior staff and other staff within the Council.
• Details relating to the Council's lowest paid staff.
• Who is responsible for ensuring that the Pay Policy is consistently complied with throughout the Council.

3. Chorley Borough Council's Responsibility

It is the Council's responsibility to ensure that:

• A policy is produced for each financial year.
• The policy is publically available through its website.
• The policy is applied fairly and consistently and complies with all relevant legislation.

4. Outcomes

The aim of the policy is to ensure that the Council's approach to determining the remuneration of all its employees is fair and transparent.

Policy Procedure

1. Scope

The pay policy covers the remuneration of all employees of the Council including temporary employees. Individuals engaged through employment agency arrangements would also be covered by the policy in compliance with the Agency Workers Regulations 2010.

2. Pay Structure

The Council uses the nationally negotiated pay spine (i.e. a defined list of salary points) as the basis for its local pay structure, and originally incorporated at the top of the spine a further 17 salary points for senior posts within the Council, though not all these points were being used. The Council also adheres to the national pay bargaining arrangements in respect of increases to the national pay spine.

The Employers side of the NJC for Local Government Services made a final pay offer of 1.75% for all spinal column points within Chorley Council's pay spine, however, this has been rejected by the employee side Trade Unions and therefore negotiations will continue. Consequently, the pay spine will remain unchanged from 2020/21 as reported in last years' Pay Policy, until such time as any pay award is agreed.

The agreed National pay spine for 2020/21 is detailed at the end of this Policy and all salaries within the Pay Policy are those which were effective from 01 April 2020 and will remain unchanged until any nationally agreed pay award is agreed as detailed above.

Chorley Council has also made inactive for 2020/21, all the spinal column points which were implemented above the national pay spine, as these were no longer used and this continues to be the case.

This pay spine is used to determine the salaries of all Council employees apart from the Chief Executive, Directors and Service Leads which are addressed separately within this policy. All posts, apart from the Chief Executive, Directors and Service Leads, have been evaluated using the nationally agreed Job Evaluation Scheme, from which the current grading structure was established. The scheme takes into account the need to ensure value for money balanced with the requirement to recruit and retain employees who are able to meet the needs of the service.

The grading of the majority of the posts within Chorley Council was established following the culmination of the Single Status Job Evaluation process in October 2007. New posts and posts which changed significantly are evaluated in accordance with the same Single Status Job Evaluation Scheme.

The Council also has a process by which it could consider paying market supplements where there have been difficulties in recruiting to the post and there is a general industry shortage which has led to comparable posts within other Councils being considerably higher. All market supplements would have to be agreed with the Human Resources Services Manager and the relevant Director and are reviewed regularly.

There is currently four instances where the Council pays a market supplement, in order to secure the services of a Director of Finance, qualified Financial accountant, ICT Shared Service Lead and a Planning Coordinator, all posts of established high market demand.

3. Shared Services

There are a number of service areas which are shared between Chorley Borough Council and South Ribble Borough Council detailed below:

• Communications and Visitor Economy
• Transformation & Partnerships
• IT Services
• Customer Services
• Audit and Risk
• Legal Services
• Financial Services
• Customer & Digital
• Democratic, Scrutiny & Electoral Services

In order to amalgamate services from the different Councils it was necessary to implement a new pay structure, still based upon the nationally negotiated pay spine, for employees from both Councils to be paid in accordance with. A copy of the new pay structure is at the end of this policy. In order to ensure equality for employees from each Council, employees on levels 10 to 17 receive an additional 6% of salary in lieu of access to the lease car scheme for which former Chorley Council employees previously had access to. Chorley Council employees who transferred to the Shared Services Pay structure with a lease car agreement in place will retain their lease car for the period of any current agreement (3 years) and would then no longer have access to the scheme and will move onto the 6% travel allowance. For details of the lease car scheme refer to section 6.

4. Leisure Services

Employees who were employed by Chorley Council who were engaged on the Leisure Services Contracts for Chorley, were all TUPE transferred to Chorley Leisure Services with effect from 1 August 2021. The employees are no longer employed by Chorley Council and therefore they are not included within the Pay Policy Statement for Chorley Council.

5. Senior Management Remuneration

The Localism Act refers to Chief Officers and Deputies, though it should be noted that the definition is very broad and relates to Metropolitan and County Council's as well as much smaller District Council's with far fewer management levels, such as Chorley Council. Therefore, for the purpose of this policy, senior management is determined by those officers who are paid in accordance with the Chief Officer and Chief Executive National Conditions of Service, i.e.:

• The Chief Executive
• Deputy Chief Executive
• Director (Customer & Digital)
• Director (Commercial Services)
• Director of Finance - S151 Officer
• Director (Governance) - Monitoring Officer
• Director (Communities)
• Director (Planning and Development)

Senior Management pay increases

The JNC for Chief Executives and the JNC for Chief Officers negotiate the pay awards for these employees and the employers side have offered a full and final pay settlement of 1.5%, which the Staff Sides of both groups have rejected. Therefore, the levels of remuneration will remain at the 2020/21 levels until any agreement is reached, and consideration is given to the pay award in light of the current levels of remuneration for senior management, though not necessarily increased in line with it.

Chief Executive

Prior to the appointment of a Chief Executive, Full Council will determine the salary of the post to be advertised. Appointment to the post is undertaken by the Shared Services Joint Appointment Panel, the membership of which is agreed annually by Full Council, and the panel would make a recommendation to appoint which must be then approved by Full Council.

The level of salary for the Chief Executive, who is the Head of Paid Services, was set by the Council at £145,000. The Chief Executive has responsibility for both Chorley Borough Council and South Ribble Borough Council, and the salary was set to reflect those responsibilities, and the post is currently employed by South Ribble Borough Council.

This figure is a single spot point and therefore there is no incremental progression. The salary was effective from 1 April 2020 and will continue until agreement of the pay award for 2021/22 has been agreed and consideration of the award is given, as detailed above.

The Chief Executive will also take on the role of Returning Officer for any Local, National and European elections, payment for which will be in accordance with the statutory calculation.

Any fees earned through the role of Chief Executive or in respect of intellectual property gained through the role of Chief Executive would be payable to the Council. Furthermore, the Chief Executive would not normally be entitled to undertake any other gainful employment.

Professional fees, where membership of a particular professional organisation is required by the council for the Chief Executive to carry out the full role of the post, will be reimbursed.

Comparison of the Chief Executive salary level to the median salary level within Chorley Council (required under the Localism Act 2011). The median figure excludes casual employees who are only employed on an ad hoc or occasional basis.

Deputy Chief Executive

Prior to the appointment of any Director, Full Council will determine the salary of the post to be advertised. Appointment to the post is undertaken by the Shared Service Appointment Panel, with the final appointment agreed by Full Council.

The level of salary for the Deputy Chief Executive is a single spot salary of £102,750.

This amount is reviewed in accordance with any pay award settlement for Chief Officers, though not necessarily increased in line with any award. As this figure is a single spot point there is no incremental progression. However, the rate of pay would be reviewed in light of any national agreements relating to pay awards under the Chief Officers Conditions of Service.

The level of pay for the Deputy Chief Executive was set with regard to:

• The post works across Chorley Council and South Ribble Borough Council with whom we have a number of shared services which are expanding.
• The wide range of functions which the Deputy Chief Executive is responsible for.
• Market analysis of similar posts within other local authorities.
• Deputising function for the Chief Executive.

Should the Deputy Chief Executive or the other Directors detailed below participate in any of the electoral processes, then a relevant payment would be made, from monies received for carrying out elections, depending upon the role which they undertook.

Any fees earned through the role of Deputy Chief Executive or the other Directors detailed below or in respect of intellectual property gained through their role of Director would be payable to the Council. Furthermore, the Deputy Chief Executive or the other Directors detailed below would not normally be entitled to undertake any other gainful employment.

Comparison of the Deputy Chief Executive level to the median salary level within Chorley Council (required under the Localism Act 2011). The median figure excludes casual employees who are only employed on an ad hoc or occasional basis.

Directors

As detailed within Section 3, Chorley Council has a number of shared services with South Ribble Borough Council. All the Director employed by Chorley Council have responsibility for services across the two Councils. Similarly, the Director of Communities, Director of Planning and Development and Director of Governance, similarly have responsibility across the two councils and as they are employed by South Ribble Borough Council (SRBC), details of their remuneration is contained within the SRBC pay policy.

Directors employed by Chorley Council

• Director (Customer and Digital)
• Director (Commercial Services) 
• Director of Finance

Prior to the appointment of any Director Full Council will determine the salary of the post to be advertised. Appointment to the post is undertaken by the Shared Services Joint Appointment Panel, the membership of which is agreed annually by Full Council. The level of salary for all the Directors are all single spot salaries.

Details of the annual salaries are shown below:

• Director (Customer and Digital) - salary band of £75,000 to £80,000 (plus a supplement of £10,000 for undertaking the responsibility of the Senior Information Risk Officer (SIRO) for both Chorley and South Ribble Borough Councils)
• Director (Commercial Services) - salary band of £75,000 to £80,000.
• Director of Finance - £75,000 plus an annual market supplement of £7,500

These amounts are reviewed in accordance with any pay award settlement for Chief Officers, though not necessarily increased in line with any award. The rate of pay would be reviewed in light of any national agreements relating to pay awards under the Chief Officers Conditions of Service, as detailed above.

The level of pay for the Directors was set with regard to:

• The wide range of functions which the Directors are responsible for.
• Market analysis of similar posts within other local authorities.
• Further details regarding the rationale for the specific Director posts is at the end of this policy.

Comparison of the Directors salary levels to the median salary level within Chorley Council (required under the Localism Act 2011). The median figure excludes casual employees who are only employed on an ad hoc or occasional basis.

Professional fees, where membership of a particular professional organisation is required by the Director to carry out the full role of the post will be reimbursed. Only the Director of Finance will have their professional fees reimbursed ad the postholder must be a member of the ICAEW in order to carry out the full role of the post.

Service Leads

Reporting directly to the relevant Director are eight of Service Leads and a Deputy Director of Finance employed by Chorley Council, some of whom are responsible for a shared services with South Ribble Borough Council (SRBC). Details of their remuneration and shared service status is below:

* These services are not currently shared, however, the postholders do report to a Shared Director.

The level of pay for the Service Leads was set with regard to:

• The wide range of functions which the Directors are responsible for.
• Market analysis of similar posts within other local authorities.
• Those posts which work across Chorley Council and South Ribble Borough Council.
• Further details regarding the rationale for the specific Service Lead posts is at the end of this policy.

6. Other conditions relating to senior management and other empoloyees

Pension Arrangements

All permanent and temporary employees, including senior management, are entitled to join the Local Government Pension Scheme if they so wish. No alternative options are available should employees not wish to join the scheme.

Enhancements to employee's pension entitlements will not normally be provided for any Council employee, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Performance Related Pay

Chorley Council does not have any scheme relating to performance related pay for any employees including Senior Management.

Bonuses

Chorley Council does not have any schemes relating to the payment of bonuses for any employees including Senior Management, and therefore none are received.

Payments on the termination of employment

An employee being made redundant would receive a payment in accordance with the Council's Redundancy Policy which is applicable to all permanent and temporary employees. Payments are based upon the statutory redundancy ready reckoner and the employee's actual weekly wage with no automatic further enhancements to redundancy payments. Additional payments may be considered in exceptional circumstances.

Adherence will be made to any restriction of public sector exit payments that may be implemented during the period of this Pay Policy Statement.

Senior Managers returning to Chorley Council

The Relevant Appointment Panel would consider applications from former Senior Managers of either Chorley Council or another local authority who received either a redundancy payment or who was in receipt of a Local Government Pension, to determine whether it would be appropriate to appoint them to a Senior Management post within Chorley Council.

Professional Subscriptions

A number of employees are members of professional organisations in connection with their employment at the Council though membership is not essential to enable them to undertake their duties on behalf of the Council. Therefore, it is the policy of the Council to only pay for an employee's subscription to a professional organisation where they have a statutory responsibility. See note above re professional subscriptions for Deputy 151 officer.

Health care

Chorley Council pays for all employees, including the senior managers detailed within this policy, to have level 1 access to a Health Care Plan, if they so wish. For all those employees participating in the scheme the value of the benefit is £66 per employee per annum. Anyone wanting to increase the level of cover, or include partners or spouses on the Health Care Plan must pay any additional premium themselves, through their salary.

Car lease scheme

Employees on all Principal Officer (PO) grades can access the car lease scheme which provides a 7.5% of salary contribution to a vehicle. This scheme cannot be accessed by employees within the Shared Services roles, who receive a salary enhancement in lieu of it.

Reservists Leave

The Council will grant up to an additional 10 days (pro-rata for part-time employees) of paid leave per annum to employees who are Reservists under the 'Special Leave for Public Duties' to attend military training and annual camp.

7. Lowest paid Employees

Lowest Paid Employees

At a meeting of the Council on the 8th January 2013, Chorley Council adopted the "Living Wage Foundation" rates for all its employees, excluding apprentices (see below), to address the issue of low pay. The Living Wage Foundation, which is a national body, established and annually updates what it considered to be a "living wage" which is an hourly rate and is currently £9.90 for outside London. The rate is set by the Centre for Research in Social Policy and is based upon what it considers to be the basic cost of living to provide a minimum income standard. This compares with the National Living Wage which is currently £8.91 per hour for employees aged 23 and over, rising to £9.50 in April 2022.

The minimum points of Scale 1 of £9.43 and £9.63 per hour are still below the Foundation Living Wage despite the last national pay awards providing greater increases to the bottom points of the pay scale in order to address the Government proposals relating to the National Minimum wage. Work was previously undertaken by the Council in light of its commitment to the Living Wage Foundation rates, to redesign existing scale 1 posts to give them greater responsibilities which subsequently meant that they were re-evaluated under the national scheme detailed previously, to scale 2 and therefore remain above the Living Wage Foundation rates with some headroom for future increases in the Living Wage Foundation rates.

Therefore, all posts within Chorley Council, excluding apprentices, are paid at scale 2 as a minimum.

Salary range for Scale 2

Progression through the grade is by annual increments until the maximum of the scale is reached.

The bottom of scale 2 is higher than the current Living Wage Foundation rate of £9.90 per hours, to be implemented no later than April 2022, but this does give some headroom for future increases to the rate which is generally greater than increases to the National Living Wage rate.

Apprenticeships

There are a number of apprentices currently employed by Chorley Council, within Streetscene, Finance, ICT, Corporate Support and Customer, Services. With effect from 1st April 2014 the Council agreed that apprentices should receive the current National Minimum Wage relating to their age. With effect from 1 st April 2022 the new minimum wage rates are detailed below:

Apprenticeships are usually employed for a fixed period of 2 years. It is difficult to ascertain the exact cost of the minimum wage for all apprentices as it depends upon the age profile and date of birth of the apprentices at any given time, as the rate can vary by up to £4.69 per hour.

8. Gender Pay Information

This information is published in compliance with the The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 and relates to the salary levels of employees at the 31 March 2022.

Average hourly rates of pay for male and female employees (Regulations 8 and 9):

Bonus payments made to male and female employees (Regulations 10, 11 and 12):

This information is not reported, as bonuses are not paid to any employee of Chorley Council.

The proportions of male and female employees in the lower, lower middle, upper middle and upper quartile pay bands:

9. Overtime Payment Arrangements

A number of recent Tribunal decisions have established the principle that employees should not be deterred from taking annual leave by being worse off for being on leave than if they had been in work. This primarily relates to overtime payments not being taken into account when calculating holiday pay, and employees just receiving their basic pay regardless of the level or regularity of overtime undertaken.

Advice from ACAS is that "Workers should usually receive the same pay while they are on annual leave as they normally receive while they are at work" and go on to say that "All types of overtime, including voluntary, must be included when calculating a worker's statutory holiday pay entitlement, apart from overtime that is only worked on a genuinely occasional and infrequent basis."

http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4109

The requirement to recognise overtime when calculating holiday pay, however, only applies to the 4 weeks of annual leave required by the EU Working Time Directive. It would be impractical to determine what overtime is regular and therefore should be reflected in holiday pay, in light of the resources required to monitor this, the lack of any legal definition as to what constitutes regular overtime and that this approach may encourage employees to undertake unnecessary overtime to establish a level of regularity.

Therefore, an additional 7.69% is added to overtime payments to accommodate the requirement to reflect overtime in holiday pay calculations for the 4 weeks of annual leave required by the EU Working Time Directive.

It is anticipated that this proactive approach avoids claims for back pay and should be taken in the context of a continuing review of the levels of overtime, including exploring ways in which overtime costs may be reduced.

It is not proposed that standby payments are enhanced, as arrangements to undertake standby are rostered around annual leave. Therefore, employees do not suffer any detriment as a result of taking annual leave.

Should there be subsequent case law which impacts upon this issue then the council will review the measures and potentially implement alternative arrangements.

The arrangements for all overtime worked were implemented from the 1st April 2018. Unison agreed to the proposals and all staff were written to informing them of the changes prior to implementation.

10. Compliance

It is the responsibility of the Council's Human Resources Services Manager to ensure that the Pay Policy is adhered to and is required to report any deviation from the Policy to the Leader of the Council.

11. Publication

This policy will be published on the Chorley Council website as soon as possible after it has been approved by Full Council.

12. Glossary of Terms

Shared Services Joint Appointment Panel - Member Panel appointed annually at Full Council

Head of Paid Service - Statutory Officer appointed in accordance with section 4 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989. The Chief Executive and Senior Officer at the Council with responsibility for co-ordinating and organising council business and ensuring proper management of staff.

Returning Officer - Statutory Officer appointed in accordance with section 35 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. The RO has responsibility for the conduct of Council elections. The role is an independent statutory function which is appointed to by, but sits separate to, the Council. The Constitution appoints the Chief Executive as RO.

Monitoring Officer - The Monitoring Officer has the specific duty to ensure that the Council, its officers, and its Elected Councillors, maintain the highest standards of conduct in all they do.

Statutory Finance Officer - Statutory Officer appointed in accordance with section 151 of the Local Government Act 1972. The officer with responsibility for the proper administration of the Council's financial affairs.
 

All other pay related allowances are the subject of either nationally or locally negotiated rates, having been determined from time to time in accordance with collective bargaining machinery.

We are required to produce a pay policy statement for each financial year. 

The policy must follow guidance from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. It must also be agreed by the full council and be publicly available. 

View the 2022/23 pay policy (PDF) [349KB] .