[natalie mcclellan]

I wasn't in post when it was evaluated, but the it ended up staying pretty much the same. It gained a small amount of head room from it's previous grade.

[Mark Lowe]

Jodie,

My post has been through the job evaluation process in the last year to align Officers from Adur and Worthing onto a Joint Pay scale as part of the joint working between the 2 Councils.

My grading has remained the same.

Mark Lowe

Adur and Worthing Councils

[Howard Boots]

Hi Jodie,

I did not think that I would be contributing (?) to the Forum again as I am soon to be an ex Head of Scrutiny, but I am afraid I could not resist a rant on the subject of the Pay and Grading Review.

Scrutiny Support staff at Tameside have fared especially badly as a result of the Pay and Grading Review with each of the losing several thousand pounds per year. The authority has very generously provided protection until July 2011, but that does not take away the fact they will eventually lose a considerable chunk of salary. I do not blame the authority it is just a very unfair system.

As you can imagine this has had a very damaging affect on morale within the Unit and even though they have been fully supported in their appeal by myself, the Assistant Chief Executive and the Chairs of the four Scrutiny Panels, their stage I appeal has not helped restore them to a grade any where like their current salary. This will also make future recruitment of appropriate staff very difficult and I already have lost two excellent members of the Unit to a neighbouring authority where the salaries are higher.

This is not a unique situation with a number of scrutiny support staff in other authorities also losing out on this kind of evaluation, even though their posts were previously evaluated to higher grades.

I did raise this at the CfPS National Forum as a situation that can only lead to the weakening of the scrutiny function in general and the reduction of the effectiveness of scrutiny support and I hope this will continue to be seriously monitored.

Fingers crossed for the stage II appeal.
Howard

[Keith Gordon]

Howard

I hope that your soon to be ex status will not mean that you will not want to drop in here and share your experience with us. I always find your posts down to earth and helpful.

Good luck with the appeals by the way

Keith

[Keith Gordon]

This thread is difficult to assess. The whole process is supposed to compare jobs and put them on a common basis.

If there is an authority that pays scrutiny staff above the mean then they will be likely to lose out such a process. If they are paid poorly, they will gain but this is all within the authority as the comparison is only made against the rates within the authority. The process does not compare jobs against similar in other authorities.

Not very satisfactory and certainly difficult to make comparisons.

I make no comment about any of the authorities posting above.

Keith

[Ed Hammond]

I entirely agree with Howard's (general) comments about pay and grading reviews. The nature of scrutiny work is that those in HR (or more often, consultants brought in to carry out such reviews) do not appreciate the nature of the work carried out by scrutiny officers.

If any of you think it would help, I am more than happy to provide any and all of you with supporting material to back up any submissions you are putting to HR as part of a grading process. Obviously this will need to be on a case-by-case basis as JDs and person specs differ by authority.

[Howard Boots]

Keith,

Thank you for your kind words, but my contributions to this forum helpful or otherwise will cease when I cease to be employed as a scrutiny support officer - there is nothing worse than someone who used to do a job telling people who are still doing that job how it should be done - I cite "Test Match Special" as an example.

I take your point about the evaluations and the situation is made more complicated because although we all do scrutiny support in general terms, how that manifests itself in practical terms can greatly vary. For example this Scrutiny Support Unit is part of the Performance and Change Directorate and provides a complete dedicated service to the four scrutiny panels (O & S Cttees). We draft and despatch agendas, briefing documents, other information and take the minutes. We draft reports and suggest conclusions and recommendations based information received and members' views expressed at panel meetings. We also manage our own web site.

Therefore we have little to do with Democratic Services which is not the case in most authorities and being stand alone has its own challenges although it does allow us to be less risk adverse that might be the case. We have very little monitoring information for noting and really only have LAA target monitoring, with meetings being very like select committees.

All this can make comparisons very difficult, but our experience locally is that authorities that have paid a generally good grade are continuing to pay a good grade.

One last and separate piece of advice is that if you are going to do a post on this site type it in word first and then copy and paste it. Twice on this thread I have got to the end of a post (including the original of this) and it has disappeared - may be I was hitting the keys too hard due to the strength of feeling (you can also get a spell check and it is a lot less frustrating).

Howard

[Howard Boots]

Ed,

I think that your generous offer would be most helpful for those going through the Pay and Grading experience. Once again, I want to emphasise that I am not being critical of this local authority which is a good employer, I am concerned that the NJC Gauge System is inappropriate for jobs like Scrutiny Support Officers.

[Deborah Breedon]

Ehammond Wrote:I entirely agree with Howard's (general) comments about pay and grading reviews. The nature of scrutiny work is that those in HR (or more often, consultants brought in to carry out such reviews) do not appreciate the nature of the work carried out by scrutiny officers.

If any of you think it would help, I am more than happy to provide any and all of you with supporting material to back up any submissions you are putting to HR as part of a grading process. Obviously this will need to be on a case-by-case basis as JDs and person specs differ by authority.

I will take you up on this offer thanks. Single status evaluations took place here before I started four years on and the role has changed considerably, it will be really useful to see some supporting material.

Deb

[Ed Hammond]

OK, I will put something quick and general together this week based on evidence from our Annual Survey.