RE: FOI- LBH/1011612 Council Staff and Performance Related Pay

Dear L. Benson

RE: FOI- LBH/1011612 – Council staff and performance related pay

I refer to your information request of 20 August 2012.

In response to your questions the answers are outlined below in relation to these.

You made an initial enquiry about staff entitlement to bonuses and performance related pay, and whether any performance payment was in relation to achieving a reduction in council spend. You have asked the following additional follow up questions:

a. I specifically had enquired what department staff who received

bonuses or performance related pay were in. This question was not

responded to. Please can you supply this information as requested.

For clarity, can you state both the numbers of staff entitled to

bonuses or performance related pay, their departments and the

numbers of staff who received bonuses or performance related pay

and their departments,

Please see the table below.

b. I specifically asked what are the terms of which they achieve

their performance related pay & or bonus, for clarity what is it

that they had achieved to receive this additional payment? What was

the target or task they had been given and how was this measured.

The assessment of performance is based on achieving a number of service specific and corporate based targets set at the beginning of the appraisal cycle in April – June each year. The meeting of targets is determined by the line manager of each senior officer being assessed, with a recommendation for performance increment award made by that line manager. The council’s Corporate committee makes the final decision on whether to approve a performance payment and they are advised by an independent adviser on matters of senior pay.

c. I had asked if any of the above were awarded for making council

cuts or savings, although this was responded to vaguely, I would

like specifics on what those cuts or savings were for each related

pay & or bonus.

There were no specific targets identified in relation to a monetary value in terms of budget or expenditure amount to cut or save. The appraisal targets of senior staff make reference instead to the management of relevant budgets and resources. Therefore whilst managers have reviewed and re-engineered their services to help achieve budget cuts, there were no specifics identified.

In addition, I would like to know

d. Was the related pay & or bonus simply awarded for making a cut

or saving? Or was there an assurance that needs of the public would

also be met and delivered with quality. What I am trying to

ascertain is, were the cuts or savings met to meet a budget or was

this to meet a budget and ensure quality delivery. i.e. efficiency

savings over cuts. Your response suggests that no care to achieve

quality or efficiency was made, just meeting of a cut in budget and

I wish to give you another opportunity to clarify.

Inherent in the review and restructure of any service to achieve a budget cut a manager would be mindful of maintaining as good a service as possible within the resources left by the budget reduction. The Council and its managers took decisions on service changes to maintain as good a service as possible and to achieve a balanced budget. The Council were also keen change the proportion of support services to resident delivery services in order to protect front line services as much as possible. Before restructuring this ratio stood at 30% support, 70% resident delivery. As a result of the restructures we have successfully delivered a change in this ratio which now stands at 19% support and 81% resident delivery.

e. Who made the judgement that the 87 senior managers you referred

to actually achieved their objective? If it was a Line Manager, was

there a conflict in chain-objectives, i.e. if the Line Manager did

not award their staff the increment for non performance, then were

they too stating they did not perform?

Please see the answer to question (b) above.

f. Of the 821 staff you state were made redundant or reduced, how

many of them were eligible for a performance related pay or bonus

Twenty eight staff were eligible for performance related pay.

If you have any further queries please contact the Feedback and Information Team as below. (Please note you should do this within two months of receiving this response.)

Feedback and Information Team

River Park House

225 High Road

N22 8HQ

Telephone: 020 8489 2550

Email:

Yours sincerely

Steve Davies

Head of Human Resources