Agenda item

The Council noted that Guildford Borough Council and Waverley Borough Council had recently approved a restructure in Legal and Democratic Services. This restructure included the introduction of Joint Posts and noted that there was a dependency on a salary benchmarking exercise to confirm what salary uplift should be applied to these new joint posts.

This restructure took place alongside an ongoing review of the Transformation and Collaboration Programme.  A key component of that programme was a review of the harmonisation of working practices.  The restructure in Legal and Democratic Services was not the only restructure that provided an opportunity for the implementation of joint posts.

Whilst the creation of joint posts presented a further enhancement in the collaborative working across both councils, it presented certain risks.  Officers were actively working on scoping a programme of work around the harmonisation of working practices and a separate report would be submitted to both councils’ Executives later in the year.  

To assist this related work the Council’s Corporate Leadership Board agreed a number of key principles in July 2024 as follows:

·      That all future joint posts should be created using Waverley terms and conditions of employment. This updated previous papers and decisions and aligned with the structure of JLT posts.

·      That there should be updated interim policies and processes that would underpin the creation of new joint posts and would remain valid only until the conclusion of the broader terms and conditions of employment programme.

·      That the additional payment made would be a ‘Special Responsibility Payment’. This definition would only be used in the context of new joint posts as under normal circumstances an honorarium payment was made for special responsibilities for an agreed period of time.

The proposed changes to the Council’s pay policy statement in light of this were considered and supported by the Executive at its meeting on 3 October together with other proposals to ensure that the Council had robust systems in place to create joint posts on an interim basis. 

The Executive also made the following additional recommendation to Council:

“That, until permanent arrangements have been adopted, Joint Posts be appointed by Waverley Borough Council on Waverley Terms and Conditions of employment with a 10% uplift on salary as set out in para 6.3 of the report submitted to the Executive and Appendix 1”.

Paragraph 6.3 of the Executive report and Appendix 1 to that report were included in the Supplementary Agenda Pack circulated to all councillors prior to the Council meeting.

Prior to the motion being proposed, a councillor asked why the Council was not putting in place a harmonised pay structure before appointing to the joint posts. In response, the Joint Chief Executive indicated that he would respond to that point outside of the meeting.

Upon the motion of the Lead Councillor for Community and Organisational Development, Councillor Carla Morson, seconded by the Leader of the Council Councillor Julia McShane to second, the Council

RESOLVED:

(1)    That, until permanent arrangements have been adopted, Joint Posts be appointed by Waverley Borough Council on Waverley Terms and Conditions of employment with a 10% uplift on salary as set out in para 6.3 of the report submitted to the Executive and in Appendix 1 to that report.

(2)    That the revised Pay Policy Statement, as set out in Appendix 1 to the report submitted to the Council, be adopted. 

Reasons:

·      The salary benchmarking exercise undertaken concludes the outstanding action from the Officer Resource: Legal & Democratic Services paper presented to GBC Executive on 16 May 2024 and WBC Executive on 7 May 2024.

·      The salary benchmarking paper sets out findings which reduces the costs of the new Legal and Democratic Services structure.

·      To ensure that the GBC Pay Policy statement reflects arrangements for Joint Posts.