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 declarations of interest.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 12 July 2022.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on the 12 July 2022 were

approved as a correct record.

There were no urgent items of business.

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

The Chairman update the Committee that Local Joint Committee had been held

earlier in the afternoon and had covered the items that were on the Employment

Committee agenda. There were no particular issues raised.

The Committee is asked to note the minutes of the Local Joint Committee held on 12 July 2022.

The minutes of the Local Joint Committee held on the 12 July 2022 were

noted.

To seek approval for revised pay arrangements across social care to address the significant recruitment and retention challenges, support a more stabilised workforce and to reduce the agency spend.

The Committee received a report which sought approval for revised pay arrangements across social care to address the significant recruitment and retention challenges, support a more stabilised workforce and to reduce the agency spend.

The Committee were joined by Paul Young, Assistant Director: HR & OD andGrainne Siggins, Executive Director: People to present the report.

The work had been ongoing, with a report being presented to CMT in February 2022 outlining the extent of temporary/agency worker use and the issues this presents for service delivery and continuity particularly in social care. As a result, a project team was established to explore the current market factors and comparative salaries, both locally and regionally, for social care for both adults and children.

There were three main reasons to why a Project Team had been formed:

1          To reduce reliance on agency workers and spend.

2          To stabilise the social care workforce by recruiting qualified workers to vacant

permanent roles.

3          To retain existing social care workforce by providing better career opportunities, training and development.

Within the supporting documentation, the work of the Project Team had been detailed. Much of this work had been challenging, with issues around gathering information from other Local Authorities as factor.

 Learning and development opportunities also needed to be a factor, following the Ofsted review, it was reported that the learning and development offering in Bracknell Forest was strong, but there was not the capacity for social workers to access it as they were too busy with their day job. This was something that this work wished to address in order to support staff.

The current pay arrangements differed between workers in children’s social care and

across adults because market premia payments and staff retention payments had

been implemented for around 10 years. Due to these pay differentials the

recommendations proposed in this report are likely to impact more positively in adult

social care rather than all areas of the children’s workforce. This had caused some issues within the review as it had been the desire to level up the salaries, however this hadn’t been possible through this review as shown by the pay arrangements detailed within the report.

The proposals for the adult workforce would place social workers and occupational

therapists at the top of the pay arrangements, in comparison neighbouring

authorities. Given the forthcoming challenges in this area and the need for greater

numbers of qualified staff there was every expectation that other local authorities would also be reviewing their own pay arrangements.

The proposed pay and grading scheme was based around three career pathways, which were detailed within the report, and allowed aligned training and career development including apprenticeships to each role within the pathways. Apprenticeship roles was something that was really important for Bracknell, with a “grow your own” approach being looked at. It was hoped that there would shortly be an apprenticeship program with a Southern University, which was a positive development.

Arising from the Committees comments and questions, the following points were  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16.

To receive an update on the 2022 pay award.

Paul Young, Assistant Director: HR & OD provided a verbal update on the 2022 Pay Award.

The current position was that this was the pay award due for April 2022,but was looking like it could be confirmed earlier than previous years.

The request from Trade Unions had been an increase of £2000 on each spinal column point along with a number of other claims, such a recognition payment for work during the pandemic, national agreement on family leave and pay and home working policies, increase in millage rates, updates to contracts on term only arrangements and an additional day annual leave.

The National Employers responded to the Unions claim back in July, with an increase on spinal column points of £1925 and an increase of 4.04% on all allowances, that would be backdated from April 2022, and from April 2023 an additional day of annual leave would be added to the annual leave entitlement.

The Trade Unions had received the National Employers offer and they have gone back to their membership to consult and determine whether the offer would be accepted. UNISON had confirmed that the offer had been accepted from their members, the ballot for GMB was still open and would close on the 21 October.

It was hoped that the Council would be in a position to grant the April 2022 pay award in the November 2022 pay.