The Head of HR and Organisational Development submitted a report that outlined the background to the new pay spine and made a recommendation for implementing the new pay spine at the Council.  A copy of the new NJC pay spine was attached to the report at Appendix 1 and an Equality Impact Assessment was attached to the report at Appendix 2.

The report stated that the Council’s current NJC pay spine had ten RG grades with RG1 having new spinal column point (scp) 11 as its highest point and RG2 had it at its lowest point.  The Council used scp 11 as the lowest entry point for roles within the NJC spine.  The introduction of an additional five scps to the new pay spine would have the effect of extending RG4 from its current position of eight scps to a total of 12.  There was no requirement to use all of the scps in the new pay spine and the NJC agreement was silent on the approach to be taken by councils with regards to the chronology of assimilation and increments (whether to assimilate to the new pay spine first and then apply an increment or vice versa).  The two approaches would produce different outcomes but either approach would be acceptable and whatever option was taken should be implemented consistently across all employees who were covered by the agreement.

In anticipation of the new national pay spine being introduced, a provision of £515k had been made in the 2019/20 budget to accommodate the increased cost of implementing the pay spine.  A pay modelling exercise had been carried out using three options and these were set out in a table.  The saving on selecting option 2 over option 1 was a reduction of £0.049m on total cost.  If option 3 was chosen, and the new scale points were introduced into the existing grading structure, this would be the lowest cost option but would also have the impact of extending RG4 from its current position of eight scps to a total of 12.  This would mean it would take employees 11 years to reach the top of the grade, rather than eight years as now, which could potentially create equal pay implications.  The alternative was for a new grading structure to be designed to accommodate the new scale points.  However, this would be more complex to achieve and was not recommended at the current time.

The report recommended the introduction of the new pay spine using option 2 (to consider awarding the increment first and then assimilate the employees to the new pay spine) and to introduce the new pay spine without the new scps.  This option was £100k less than the budget provision and was set out in a table in the report.

It would be imperative that appraisals were completed by the due date of end of February 2019 as this was the mechanism for determining if an increment was due so that an employee could then be transferred to the new pay spine and would receive the ‘cost of living’ pay award. 

Resolved –    That the proposal to implement the new pay spine using Option 2 (to consider awarding an increment first and then assimilate employees to the new pay spine, and to introduce the new pay spine without the new spinal column points) with effect from 1 April 2019 be agreed.