Issue - meetings

This report provides Members with information to determine the Council’s pay award for employees for 2025/26.

The report of the Chief Executive provided Members with information to determine the Council’s pay award for employees for 2025/26.

The Chair proposed and it was seconded that Council Procedure Rule No 10.11 be suspended, to allow a representative of UNISON to address the Committee on behalf of its members, during which concern was raised in respect of the rise in the cost of living and the impact of inflation.  Furthermore, concern was expressed in regard to the negative impact on the recruitment and retention of staff and the sustainability of the Council’s operations.  Following the statement from UNISON, Council Procedure Rules were reapplied.

Members noted that the Borough Council employees had a term in their contracts which read ‘Salaries will be revised on 1 April each year by an amount determined by the Authority having regard to movements in the Retail Price Index, comparative pay settlements and prevailing economic conditions’ and the Borough Council therefore determined its own pay awards and was not tied into the national process of collective bargaining.  The Borough Council’s current salary scales were attached at Annex 1 of the report and UNISON’s pay claim for 2025/26 at Annex 2.

During discussion, Members were made aware of the on-going need to make savings and transformation contributions in the context of the Medium-Term Financial Strategy and took into consideration the above inflation rise of the National Living Wage from 1 April 2025 which would increase from £11.44 per hour to £12.21 per hour and the impact on the Council’s grades at the lower end of the salary scales. 

Councillor J Clokey proposed, seconded by Councillor B Banks that existing salary scales 1 and 2 and spinal point 315 of salary scale 3 be deleted from the Council’s pay scale, that the hourly rate of spinal point 316 be increased to £12.60 per hour and that a pay award of 2.9% be applied to all other salary scales, with effect from 1 April 2025. Following a formal vote, the proposal was carried.

RESOLVED: That

(1)        salary scales 1 and 2 of the Council’s pay scale, be deleted;

(2)        spinal point 315 of salary scale 3 of the Council’s pay scale, be deleted;

(3)        the hourly rate of scale 3, spinal point 316, be increased to £12.60 per hour; and

(4)        a pay award of 2.9% be applied to all other salary scales, with effect from 1 April 2025.