Pay & Allowances Framework 2015 - Implementation

PAY & ALLOWANCES FRAMEWORK 2015 - IMPLEMENTATION

NEW CONTRACT TEMPLATES FOR APPOINTMENTS ON OR AFTER 1 JUNE 2015

Introduction

This guidance is applicable for the production of contracts for all support staff appointments that take effect on or after 1st June 2015, where the school have implemented the Pay & Allowances Framework 2015.

In preparation for the implementation of the Pay & Allowances Framework 2015, all existing contract templates for Council staff and schools support staff have been reviewed and re-drafted in order to achieve the following:

Incorporation of the changes introduced by the implementation of the Pay & Allowances Framework.

Consistency in terms and conditions across all Southampton City Council staff, whether employed within the Council or in Southampton schools.

A reduction in the number of templates, by amalgamating and consolidating existing templates. This means that the remaining templates have more options to edit or delete content. All contract templates are now defined by working pattern (e.g. 52 weeks, term time only, casual), rather than role (e.g. Supervisory Assistant), with the exception of the Clerk to Governors contract.

Pay & Allowances Contract Changes

Contract changes have been necessary to reflect the provisions of the Pay & Allowances Framework.

All contracts now contain a sentence within the Pay & Grading paragraph relating to the Living Wage - applicable to spinal column points 6-10. Where the Living Wage uplift does not apply, this sentence can be deleted.

An optional Pay Protection paragraph reflects the Council’s pay protection policy effective from 1 June 2015. Where a new contract is issued in circumstances where pay protection applies, this paragraph should be retained within the contract and edited as necessary. Where pay protection is not applicable the paragraph should be deleted.

The Allowances paragraph reflects the Pay & Allowances Framework which is appended to all the contract templates, setting out the new framework for allowances and additional payments in full. The paragraph can be edited to state that no allowances apply, or that specific allowances (from a list displayed) do apply – the allowances that are not relevant can be deleted.

Annual leave entitlement is now linked to specific grades rather than bands of scale points and entitlements for employees with over 5 or 20 years’ service in grades 1-7 have increased. Leave tables (including paid weeks tables for term time only employees) have been updated to reflect this, as have leave accrual rates for casual workers (which should apply to all hours worked) and Clerks to Governors.

All SCC Employees and Contract Templates

Contract templates include updated elements for consistency and reflect national terms and conditions.

Contract templates now record full service dates – post start date, school continuous employment start date (start date with the specific school, which determines statutory entitlements under the Employments Rights Acts), continuous local government start date (applicable to the calculation of redundancy rights, annual leave and entitlements under the occupational maternity and sickness schemes)and aggregated service which, if there is any, will impact on length of service calculations relating to annual leave entitlement. (Refer to Appendix 1 for detailed information on service dates.)

A model Probation Policy & Procedure will be sentto schools shortly with a recommendation that Governing Bodies ratify the document. The policy provides a formal framework for managing probationary periods, and mirrors recent updates to the Council’s policy to make specific provisions for fixed term employees. If your school ratifies the policy the standard paragraph can remain in all new contracts produced after the policy is adopted. If your school chooses not to ratify the policy or has yet to do so, the contract paragraph will need to be amended to read as follows:

“This appointment shall be subject to your satisfactorily completing the initial six months probationary period of service during which you will be expected to establish your suitability for the post.”

Incremental progression:Employees should progress up their appointed grade by one spinal column point each year on 1 April up to the top point of thatgrade. Annual incremental progression derives from national terms and conditions for local government employees (the Green Book) and is mirrored within the Council’s Conditions of Service. Contract templates now include a statement on incremental progression.

Recovery of overpayments: employers are entitled to recover overpayments made to employees in circumstances defined in legislation. This has been the case for many years and is not a new development. The information has been included in school contract templates to reflect processes that already exist.

Notice requirements and entitlements have been revised to reflect the contractual notice provisions of Southampton City Council. This change applies to new starters only (and was not included in the contracts re-issued to existing staff effective from 1 June 2015).

Non-disclosure of confidential information and data protection statements are applicable to all Council employees and have been added to the contract templates during the update process.

Contract templates include a Disclosure & Barring paragraph. Where one of the requirements for an appointment is a satisfactory DBS check, with the potential for future re-checks, the paragraph should be retained in the finished contract.

A further standard sentence has been added to the Disclosure and Barring Service Check paragraph relating to the Childcare (Disqualifications) Regulations 2009; which cover staff providing care for children in the early years provision (up to and including reception age), staff working in out of school hours childcare such as breakfast and after school clubs and staff directly involved in the management of these areas. The Regulations place a statutory responsibility on staff to disclose relevant offences and orders against themselves and for the individuals in their household. Due to the practice of utilising support staff across year groups flexibly and / or reallocating year groups on an annual basis, the contract template paragraphs are worded in a way that allows them to apply when necessary, rather than schools having to reissue contracts when staff come under the Regulations and move outside of their scope.

The Continuous and Aggregated Service paragraph has been amended to reflect a fuller explanation of continuous service, one which schools need to apply when recording service information and reviewing service-related entitlements. Further details areprovided in Appendix 1.

The casual engagement letter has been amended so that casual workers are not precluded from receiving Occupational Sick Pay, where they would qualify to do so. This will only be relevant where a worker is on a long-term assignment with the school, with a continuous and regular working pattern. Further guidance will be available to schools on this.

Paragraphs have been re-ordered to reflect a standard contract format and an acceptance form is included for individuals to complete and return to the school to confirm their acceptance of the post.

Identifying the Correct Contract Template

The diagram below sets out the previous contract templates on Young Southampton and identifies the corresponding template to be used from the Pay & Allowances suite of contract templates.

* Please note, all employees are now monthly paid, all of the revised contract templates reflect this.

Producing Contracts

This section provides some pointers on producing contracts using the new templates, until schools become familiar with them.

Within each template text in CAPITALS denotes where information needs to be input into the contract template. Text in red highlights where content needs to be edited or deleted.

It may be helpful to keep the editable fields red whilst working in the contract and correct the font colour at the end. You can change the colour by hitting ‘ctrl’ and ‘A’ keys together to select all the text in the document and then change the font colour to automatic (black).

As shown in the screen print above, all contract template types are identified within the header on the first page of the contract. Schools can delete this from the document header if preferred.

Delete the phrase ‘and is subject to the satisfactory completion of the pre-employment checks set out in your offer letter’ where all pre-employment checks have been completed prior to contract issue. Only in exceptional circumstances should contracts be sent out prior to pre-employment checks being completed, and where this occurs the ‘subject to’ sentence should remain.

Service dates need to be verified and included within the contract of employment for new starters. For continuous local government and aggregated service, this information can be taken from the application form for the post (as long as specific dates, not just years, are given). Where specific dates were not recorded on the form, the employee will need to evidence the service by other means – e.g. previous contracts, employer references.

Construction of the ‘Details of your Appointment’ paragraph, depends on whether the appointment is permanent or fixed term.

Details of Your Appointment

This contract is for a PERMANENT/FIXED TERM appointment and is expected to end on END DATE (unless terminated earlier - see notice periods). [delete as appropriate]

When issuing a ‘Casual Working Arrangement’ letter, the fields that require editing remain highlighted in yellow, as was the case in the previous version. The hourly rate stated must equate to a specific spinal column point on the revised pay grade structure, and for points 6-10 will include the Living Wage uplift (so the hourly rates will be the same).

The contract template for staff employed to work term time only other than 39 weeks (for supervisory assistants this is commonly 38 weeks, and for other roles this could be 38 weeks or anything up to 45 working weeks per year); includes total paid weeks tables (i.e. contracted working weeks plus paid holiday entitlement) for each specific working weeks arrangement. So, for example, if an employee is only required to work 38 weeks per year because they do not work in school closure periods and are not required to work on INSET days, only the 38 weeks table needs to be included in the contract, all the other tables can be deleted.

APPENDIX 1. CONTINUOUS AND AGGREGATED SERVICE DATES(for schools where Southampton City Council is the employer)

Continuous Local Government Service:

For the purposes of calculating redundancy, annual leave, and occupational maternity/sickness entitlements, any continuous service with:

•a local authority

•a school where a local authority is the employer

•or any other body identified as an associated employer under the Redundancy Payments (Local Government) Modification Order 1983 (as amended) - which will cover some NHS, university, housing association, FE college and police support staff roles;

will be taken into account. Your HR service provider can advise which organisations are included within the Modification Order.

For service with different schools/authorities to be continuous there must be a break of no more than one week (Sunday to Saturday) between two contracts, or continuity will be broken (except where there is a redundancy and a new job is taken up within 4 weeks). Please note that school closure periods do not count as breaks in service.

A local agreement is operated by SCC in relation to aggregated service:

All local authority service, service with Hampshire Constabulary (support staff only) and the Hampshire Fire Service, whether continuous or not, will count towards annual leave entitlement (this is aggregated service). Service with any local authority (District, City, County, Parish, Metropolitan or Borough Council or “New Town” Council) is recognised.

Service breaks due to maternity/child care (Green Book):

Where an employee returns to local government service following a break for maternity reasons, or reasons concerned with caring for children or other dependents, he or she will be entitled to have previous service taken into account for the purpose of the calculation of entitlement to annual leave as long as no permanent full time employment has intervened.

In relation to TUPE transfers:

Where an employee’s local government continuous service is protected under TUPE upon an outwards transfer and they then subsequently TUPE transfer back to local authority service without a break between employments; all previous continuous service will be recognised for the purposes of calculation of local government continuous service. Where an employee returns to local authority service on a voluntary basis, the HR service provider will advise on service continuity issues, with reference to the Council’s current service conditions.