Agenda and minutes

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declaration of interest.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 20 March 2018 and 2 July 2018.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the Committee held on 20 March 2018 and 2 July 2018 be approved as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

There were no urgent items of business.

A verbal update from the Chairman of the Local Joint Committee.

Councillor Leake reported that Unison understood the need for discontinuing the Bracknell Forest Supplement but wished for it to be kept under review due to the unknowns surrounding nation increases. It was also reported that Unison were concerned that the job evaluation scheme hadn’t previously been implemented correctly.

The Committee is asked to note the minutes of the Local Joint Committee held on 2 July 2018.

The Committee noted the minutes of the Local Joint Committee held on 2 July

2018.

To address the fourth annual reassessment of the Bracknell Forest Supplement which would take effect from 1 April 2018.

The Chief Officer: Human Resources reported that the decision surrounding the Bracknell Forest Supplement had been delayed until confirmation of the 2018 NJC pay award, so any change would be backdated from 1 April 2018.

Due to the national action on low pay the Bracknell Forest Supplement was now irrelevant as the real living wage was now higher that the supplement, therefore there were no Bracknell Forest staff members in receipt of the supplement. As a result the Committee were recommended to discontinuing the local supplement payments but this would be kept under review.

RESOLVED that the Bracknell Forest Supplement be discontinued with immediate effect, given that national measures mean the lowest NJC pay scale point is now higher than the Real living wage, making BF Supplement irrelevant.

To consider whether to change the December pay date.

The Chief Officer: Human Resources reported that for many years the December payroll run has been earlier in the month. Historically, the main reason for early payment was to ensure that payslips were delivered to schools before school term ended. However, payslips were now electronic and could be accessed from home or checked when convenient. It was suggested that as this was no longer a reason to process payroll prior to Christmas, the payment date could be changed to fall in line with the other months in the year where payment is made on the last working day of the month.

This had been considered on one previous occasion by Unions. Unison had been

supportive of the change however Teacher’s Unions were not. Since that

consideration, work has been done with Schools and the indication was that the

change would be supported

It was proposed that the changed payment date would be effective from December

2018. This would give plenty of time to inform staff of the change prior to the

December pay run.

In response to the Committee’s queries the following points were made:

·         Once the change had been formally agreed  Staff Members  and the Unions would be informed of the change well in advance of December.

·         Staff were currently paid on the last Friday before Christmas.

·         The Unions had already formally agreed the change.

RESOLVED that December pay date and implementation ready for December 2018 is supported.

That pursuant to Regulation 21 of the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Access to Information) Regulations 2000 and having regard to the public interest, members of the public and press be excluded from the meeting for the consideration of item 10 on the agenda (item 20 in the minutes) which involves the likely disclosure of exempt information under the following category of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972:

(3)        Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person.

To request that market premia payments are added to posts within the  Property branch in the Resources directorate.

The Committee received a  report is to requesting that market premia payments are added to the Head of Property Maintenance post and the post of Strategic Head of Asset Management in the Property branch in the Resources directorate. This had arisen due to ongoing failure to appoint any suitable applicants after three

recruitment attempts to the post of Head of Property Maintenance over an eight month period.

During debate a number of issue and concerns were raised by Members of the Committee, as a result the proposed recommendation fell at the vote and an alternative motion proposed and agreed.

RESOLVED that the decision be deferred until a proper investigation had taken place to whether the two posts could be combined.