The Soulbury Officers’ Side Claim for 20081

PRIORITISING CHILDREN’S OUTCOMES

THE SOULBURY COMMITTEE OFFICERS’ SIDE CLAIM

PAY AND CONDITIONS FROM SEPTEMBER 2008

AEP ASPECT NAYCEO NUT

This submission sets out the Officers’ Side’s case for increases in pay and changes to the existing Soulbury structure from 1 September 2008.

It also reiterates the case made during last year’s discussions that the emergence of integrated education and children’s services within local authorities requires the further development of negotiating structures for professional staff within those services.

MAY 2008

SECTION 1THE SCOPE OF SOULBURY

The Officers’ Side sees the Soulbury Committee as a key specialist negotiating body focusing on a unique group of senior educational professionals within the children’s services sector.

The Officers’ Side seeks, therefore, a commitment from the national employers both to the future of the present Soulbury machinery and to discussions at the earliest possible stage on the possibility of building on that machinery as outlined below.

In its 2007 claim, the Officers’ Side discussed the growing impact of the move to children’s services structures upon local authority staffing arrangements. In particular, we considered the closer relationships between pay, conditions, roles and responsibilities of the professional groups represented by Soulbury and those for other local authority professionals involved with the delivery of services for children and young people.

The Officers’ Side believes that national pay and conditions structures remain an essential aid to local authority employers who are seeking to meet the many obligations flowing from the development of integrated children’s services.

Last year’s Officers’ Side claim set out the case for a broader national structure which could encompass therange of senior professional groups employed within children’s services. We continue to believe that there is a clear case for bringing together these various groups of professionals in a unified and coherent structure. That view appears to be confirmed by recent developments outside Soulbury.

The LGE consultation paper Delivering a Rewarding Future: An Approach to Pay and Benefits in Local Government for the 21st Century, published in May 2007, considered the development of pay structures in local government which could secure “beneficial harmonisation with localised determination” (p5). The LGE envisaged, under an overall “national local government framework”, a set of “specific agreements based around job families e.g. children’s services”. This concept was underlined in an accompanying paragraph which stated “the idea is that pay structures and agreements focussed on particular types of jobs are more responsive to the market and drive productivity by promoting more relevant career paths”.

The subsequent joint IdeA/LGE/LGA paper Delivering Through People: Big Challenges, Big Questions considered key local government workforce issues such as the need to overcome significant occupational skills shortages in key areas and the case for attracting and retaining talented, high-performing, innovative, skilled and flexible staff. That document also referred to "new roles, structures and career pathways contributing to minimal occupations shortages". These represent key practical considerations for the future children’s workforce, including its important local government component, and especially for senior professionals working to deliver important local authority children’s services.

We are clear that evolving children’s workforce plans, including the DCSF’s April 2008 document Building Brighter Futures: Next Steps for the Children’s Workforce, point to a process of change and reform affecting the professional practice and development of significant children’s services professions, in order to provide more flexible, personalised and citizen-focussed services across the localities. This process will require a genuine and visible partnership with the workforce concerned, in order to achieve staff ownership of the attendant changes and avoid the risk of lowered staff morale as traditional methods of service delivery give way to newer approaches. Indeed, the introduction of integrated children’s services directorates within local authorities is already leading to significant changes at local level.

It is clear that most local authorities continue to regard the Soulbury Committee’s pay and conditions structure as a robust and appropriate set of arrangements for professionals in children’s services. In 2005, the scope of the Soulbury structure was formally expanded in order to incorporate arange of newer groups of school or educational improvement professionals working within the local authority sector and already largely paid on Soulbury terms. The Soulbury structure is, of course, in widespread and growing use by local authorities for other groups as well.

The Soulbury Committee has, in recent years, demonstrated its ability to respond to changing circumstances. Many of the themes and issues identified in the LGE consultation paper havealready been anticipated by the Soulbury Committee.

Soulbury agreements are now widely regarded as appropriate and sensitive to the needs of local authorities and employees alike. Soulbury has, for example, moved towards the establishment of a greater degree of flexibility in the Committee’s agreements. The nationally determined Soulbury pay scales and conditions of service agreements are capable of being applied flexibly at the local level, in particular to respond to the need to recruit and retain key professionals. Soulbury has also sought to emphasise the role of continuing professional development in both service development and pay determination.

Finally, and importantly, the Soulbury machinery offers professional staff in the sector an important degree of participation and joint ownership of their pay and conditions and, as a consequence, promises employers effective outcomes and implementation.

The development of unified children’s services and directorates now creates a potential for further change. Options for consideration could include arrangements encompassing all of the senior professional groups employed within such directorates in addition to those currently covered by the Soulbury structure. Such arrangementsmight have the potential to provide a more coherent and sensible approach to pay arrangements for the children’s workforce sector.

Such a structure would certainly continue to draw together the existing groups covered by the present Soulbury Report. In addition to those groups, however, it could also draw together, within a single framework, other groups of professional employees working on other areas in the children’s services sector who are currently outside Soulbury but do not fit easily within the scope of the NJC for Local Government Services or school teachers’ arrangements.

The Officers’ Side proposal for a broader structure encompassing senior educational professional groups employed within children’s servicesappears to accord with the LGA’s thinking as expressed in its consultative document. The Officers’ Side therefore seeks serious discussions on this proposal at the earliest possible stage.

SECTION 2PAY AND CONDITIONS FROM SEPTEMBER 2008

OFFICERS’ SIDE CLAIM

The Officers’ Side believes that pay for Soulbury officers must rise significantly if local authority employers are to continue to deliver successful outcomes in respect of the Government’s Every Child Matters and integrated children’s services agenda. Local authorities must be able to recruit well qualified, highly experienced and dynamic individuals. At present, however, they face problems in recruiting and retaining Soulbury officers. Failure to maintain pay competitiveness, including through increases in the national pay scales, will only increase these difficulties.

Conditions of service, and in particular workload and working time, also require urgent consideration, both in order to secure an appropriate work life balance for existing Soulbury officers and in order to ensure that this area does not constitute a further barrier to recruitment and retention.

1.SUMMARY OF CLAIM

In respect of pay and conditions of service from September 2008, the Officers’ Side therefore makes the following proposals.

2008increase in pay scales

Althoughbroadly in line with other public sector pay settlements for the year, the 2007 Soulbury pay agreement was below the rate of inflation as measured by the Retail Prices Index. That represented a pay cut in real terms for Soulbury paid officers. That real term pay cut should not be exacerbated by a further below-inflation pay increase for 2008.

The Officers’ Side is, accordingly, seekinga significant increase in all pay scales from September 2008.

The Officers’ Side is seeking a further 12 month pay agreement. Any settlement lasting longer than 12 months would have to include robust safeguards against inflation eroding agreed increases in pay.

Structural changes

Several changes to existing Soulbury pay structures were either agreed as part of the 2007 settlement or have been referred for continuing discussion within a Soulbury joint working party. This claim does not address those matters. The Officers’ Side wishes to make it clear, however, that a successful outcome to those discussions, in particular the proposed restructuring of the education psychologists’ scales and the updating of the formal definitions of various professional groups, are of great importance to the Officers’ Side.

The Officers’ Side has identified a number of further changes which should be made to the existing Soulbury pay structure. In brief, the Officers’ Side seeks:

  • changes to the minimum starting points on the Educational Improvement Professionals (formerly Inspectors/Advisers) pay spine and extension of that spine beyond the current maximum;
  • The introduction of a single, merged pay spine forEducational Psychologists through changes to the existing two pay scales;
  • an exploration of the relationship between the Trainee and Assistant Educational Psychologists pay scales; and
  • a new title for the Youth and Community Service Officers group to reflect local practice and national developments, together with alterations to both the minimum and maximum points of that pay spine.

London allowances

Soulbury London area allowances are well below those paid elsewhere in the public and voluntary sectors and bymany private sector employers. The Officers’ Side believes thata significant increase in Soulbury London area allowancesremains essential.

Conditions of service

The Officers’ Side proposes the following:

  • the actions agreed as part of the 2007 Soulbury settlement in relation to local authorities and risk assessments should now be undertaken;
  • a joint survey should be undertaken on working load and working hours; and
  • a further joint survey should be undertaken on local authorities’ car user allowanceschemes for Soulbury staff in order to inform discussions on the case for separate national provisions in relation to Soulbury staff.

2.ECONOMIC ISSUES

The principal focus of the Officers’ Side case is once more the critical need to improve the relative pay position of Soulbury officers compared to the groups from whom they are generally recruited.

This section of the claim considers that area and also considers the relevance of the Government’s public sector pay policy, the current level of inflation and increases in average earnings across the economy as a whole.

The Officers’ Side is aware of the pressures upon the national employers, both from the Government’s wish to restrict public sector pay increases and from pressure on local authority budgets. The Officers’ Side also acknowledges that the national employers agreed last year to an increase in excess of the 2 per cent figure favoured by Government. That increase nevertheless led both to a further decline in Soulbury officers’ pay relative to that of comparator groups and to an actual cut in real terms in the value of their pay.

Pay competitiveness with traditional comparator groups

Over the past year, average pay for the groups from which Soulbury officers, in particular educational improvement professionals, are traditionally recruited - senior members of the teaching profession, notably leadership group staff - has risen faster than Soulbury pay.

These are a key group of employees who are central to authorities’ work in pursuit of objectives critical to authorities and Government. The long term decline in the relative values of the Soulbury pay scales compared to those of the key sources of recruitment must be reversed through the 2008 Soulbury pay settlement.

The following table sets out the long term effects of the failure to maintain Soulbury pay rates compared to the traditional comparators used for the previous formal pay linkages.

Table 1Soulbury and Headteachers’ Pay

Soulbury Senior Advisers

Minimum entry point 1£44,472point 13

Average salary 2£51,267

Headteachers Group 5

Median salary point 3£67,854point L28

Typical range 3£63,051points L25-L31

to £73,026

Soulbury Principal Advisers

Minimum entry point 1£52,121point 20

Average salary 2£58,937

Headteachers Group 7

Median salary point 3£80,550point L35

Typical range 3£73,026points L31-L37

to £84,597

Soulbury Senior Educational Psychologists

Minimum entry point 1£41,001point 1

Average salary 2£46,044

Headteachers Group 5

Median salary point 3£67,854point L28

Typical range 3£63,051points L25-L31

to £73,026

Pay figures for Soulbury and head teachers as at 1 September 2007

1 Soulbury scales 1 September 2007

2 Average salaries for Soulbury advisers and EPs based on average salary figures taken from Soulbury Workforce Survey 2007 table 16 p33

3 Typical range adapted from STRB Pay Survey September 2007 table 6 p30

The average pay gap between senior Soulbury advisers and Group 5 head teachers is around £16,587 and has increased over last year. The average pay gap between principal advisers and Group 7 head teachers has also increased over the last 12 months to around £21,613. The average pay gap between senior and principal Soulbury educational psychologists and Group 5 and Group 7 head teachers, are £21,810 and £30,117 respectively.

The data shows once more that the pay of Soulbury officers is becoming ever less competitive to that of the traditional comparator groups. Recruitmentto Soulbury posts from among these groups is now an unrealistic prospect without the exercise of substantial discretionary additions in pay.

Consequent exercise of pay flexibility

Increases in average pay for Soulbury officers have, however,generally continued to outstrip the annual pay Soulbury increase. This suggests that national pay awards have not proved sufficient in practice for local employers to recruit and retain staff.

The 2004 Soulbury Workforce Survey demonstrated that the average pay increases for Soulbury officers between 2002 and 2004 were significantly higher in most groups than the level of the Soulbury settlements in those years.

The 2007 Soulbury Workforce Survey shows that average pay increases between 2004 and 2007 were again higher than the level of national pay agreements reached in Soulbury. National pay increases over that period rose by 6.2%. In contrast, the average pay for EPs rose by about 8%. For inspectors and advisers, average pay rose by around 9% for seniors and by around 13% for principals. The average pay increase for main grade inspectors and advisers was around 6% but this is likely to have been distorted by the inappropriate inclusion of other postholders in that group. The data for YCOs does not follow this general pattern but we see this as a result of changes in the composition of that group which are discussed elsewhere in this claim.

National level pay awards have clearly not been considered sufficient by themselves by local employers to address problems of recruitment and retention. The inadequacy of the general pay increase has led some local authority employers to resort to the use of flexibility to pay proper, competitive and professional rates of pay. Long term reliance upon the various discretions, however, is not tenable. The Officers’ Side remains firmly of the view that basic pay rates should be set at levels which do not require adoption of such ad hoc measures.

Impact of pensions scheme changes

It should also be noted that Soulbury officers have also lost out in comparative terms due to theimplementation of the revised contribution rates for the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) from April 2008. Soulbury-paid officers earning £40,000, for example, now pay an overall contribution of 6.8% while those earning £60,000 will pay 7.2%. These higher employee contributions amount to a reduction in net pay and a worsening of their pay position compared to the comparator groups within teaching.

More importantly, however, other implications of the LGPS changes, in particular the increased normal pension age for new entrants to the LGPS, including those moving into Soulbury employment having previously in membership of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, will also now work to discourage recruitment and retention of Soulbury staff.

Future changes to school leadership group pay

In its Seventeenth Report Part Two, published in April 2008, the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) has undertaken a significant review of the future of school leadership. It has reviewed the range of emerging new models of school leadership, including the creation of hard and soft federations of schools and the adoption of models such as collaborative, system and distributed leadership.

The STRB has recommended a further review of the national framework of pay and conditions for leadership group staff in response to these developments and the Secretary of State has indicated his willingness to pursue this course of action.

The outcome of the review will obviously have a number of implications. Soulbury will need to monitor developments closely.

Average earnings elsewhere

By contrast, in the private sector, pay increases have responded to rising living costs and are now growing at an annual rate of 4%.

The latest official headline figures for average earnings growth in the private sector shows this is running at 4% (March 2008). Pay settlements in that sector according to Incomes Data Services Pay Report continue to average 3.5% in the three month period to March 2008 with early indications that April settlements have averaged 4% or more. IRS Pay Intelligencehas forecast in April 2008 that average earnings growth will increase to 4.1% in the third quarter of 2008.