Issue - meetings

Cabinet approved the Market Forces Supplements Policy and Procedure.

Decision

Cabinet approved the Market Forces Supplements Policy and Procedure.

Corporate Priorities

A clean, safe and enjoyable environment

Building strong and vibrant communities

Ensuring economic growth and prosperity

Providing good quality affordable homes, in particular for those most in need

Ensuring efficient, effective and modern service delivery

Climate and ecological emergency

Statutory Officer Comments:

Monitoring Officer:

The policy should help to ensure that the Council can recruit and retain staff in key areas and therefore help to ensure that the Council meets of all its statutory requirements.

Deputy S151 Officer:

The policy aims to increase staff retention and hence reduce the need to recruit or employ interim resources, which should see a reduction in Council staffing spend and recruitment costs. The project has a baseline budget of £200k proposed as part of the 2023/24 draft budget that will be monitored and reported on.

Advice

Cllr Elliot introduced the report, which sets out the situation with recruiting and retaining staff against the private sector and how we remunerate and retain staff in certain areas.

Cllr Banks asked; has this been based on any other policies that have been successful, is there an evidence base?

CHamilton advised this is one of a number of tools to develop a solution, been developed alongside the Heads of HR group across Councils within the County.  Our proximity to London is challenging in relation to staff being able to get better salaries for similar roles in London. 

Cllr Anderson commented that the Council has done something similar in the past and it has helped.

Cllr Tindall commented; he has previous experience of this sort of policy, they do work but they need to be regularly monitored to ensure they are not regarded as just an additional pay that is retained indefinitely.

Cllr Douris referred to pg. 156 of the report (impact assessment), stating this was discussed at Finance & Resource Overview & Scrutiny where he asked, and it was agreed, to add in the column to the left that we would include ‘care leavers’, this change has been omitted, Cllr Douris asked if that could please be included.

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