Remuneration for Chief Officers
The council has chosen to introduce local arrangements for the Senior Leadership Team pay because it believes that this delivers a better outcome in terms of managing performance and flexibility.
The Leader of the Council may recommend to the Full Council changes to the remuneration package following a review and after taking independent pay advice from the Local Government Association, South West Councils or a similar body.
Salary increases in relation to cost of living will be made in line with the relevant recommendation of the National Joint Council for Local Government Services (the NJC), the Joint Negotiating Committee for Chief Executives (the JNC) or other relevant national negotiating body for each chief officer.
The salary for the Chief Executive includes remuneration for holding the statutory office of Head of Paid Service.
The salary for the Chief Executive is a spot salary. Directors will be paid in accordance with an incremental grade as part of the Council's pay and grading structure. The pay band has three incremental points and post holders can progress through the increments each April, subject to satisfactory performance.
From time to time, the Chief Executive will designate a Chief Officer to carry out the role of Deputy Chief Executive in addition to their substantive role. The nominated Deputy Chief Executive receives a special responsibility allowance of £8,135per annum.
Where possible, salary levels will be consistent with similar organisations, although the Council will retain the right to have due regard to market forces that may affect its ability to recruit and retain high quality officers, whilst balancing this against the need to ensure value for money for residents.
The salaries, including the special responsibility allowances paid to the Deputy Chief Executive and the Monitoring Officer are the only remuneration for work carried out. At present, there are no additional payments made to chief officers relating to performance or any other matters and no bonus is payable.
Additional payments are made by Central Government to officers carrying out additional duties at elections. The determination of the allowance is made by the Government and these payments are not within the scope of this policy. There are no payments made by the Council for election duties.
In accordance with the provisions of the Council's Travel and Subsistence Policy, that applies equally to all employees, the relevant chief officers may attract an essential car user lump sum allowance and be reimbursed with business expenses subject to the submission of a claim with receipts. For 2021/22, all of the Chief Officers are designated as casual car users and will not receive an essential car user lump sum allowance.
From 1 April 2013, all business mileage will be reimbursed in accordance with the approved HMRC rates, currently 45p per mile. This replaces the previous policy under which business mileage was reimbursed at the higher rate agreed by the NJC, currently 50.5p per mile for essential users and 65p per mile for casual users.
Relationship with the remuneration of other employees of the Council
The Hutton Report (March 2011) identified that the most appropriate way of measuring pay dispersion within an organisation is the multiple of highest earnings to median earnings. Tracking this multiple will ensure that the Council is accountable for the relationship between the pay of its executives and the wider workforce.
Through this pay policy statement, the Council will track this multiple on an annual basis and will publish the following information on its website each year (see Appendix A):
- The level and elements of remuneration to each relevant chief officer
- The remuneration of the lowest paid employees
- The relationship between the remuneration of the Head of Paid Service and the median earnings of all employees
- Other specific aspects of relevant chief officer remuneration
Each year the published data will be reviewed by the Leader of the Council and if the multiplier between the highest and the lowest paid employee within the Council exceeds a factor of 10, the Leader shall present a report to the Full Council for consideration.
For the purposes of this pay policy statement, the 'lowest paid employees' are identified as those employees carrying out a substantive role within the Council's established workforce with the lowest annual full-time equivalent salary.
The 'median earnings' have been identified by listing all salaries paid to employees in ascending order and finding the salary paid to the employee ranked in the middle of the list.