Agenda and draft minutes

To consider the minutes of the previous meeting of the Staffing Committee held on 17 December 2025 and approve them as a true and correct record of the proceedings and to be signed by the Chair.

Resolved:

That the minutes of the previous meeting held on 19th December, 2025, be approved as a true and correct record of the proceedings for signature by the Chair.

To receive declarations of interest from Members in respect of items listed on the agenda.

There were no declarations of interest to report.

To consider whether the press and public should be excluded from the meeting during consideration of any part of the agenda.

Appendix 1 to Item 7 contained exempt information but the meeting remained open throughout.

To consider and receive the Pay Policy Statement for 2026-27 and recommend to Council the statement for approval.

Consideration was given to the report presented by the Service Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development which provided details of the Pay Policy Statement for 2026-27 that the Council was required to publish under Chapter 8 of the Localism Act 2011. The Pay Policy Statement must be published following approval by the Council by the 31st March of each year and detail the renumeration of its Chief Officers.

In accordance with the Council’s Scheme of Delegation, the Staffing Committee determined conditions of service, employment policies and procedures and renumeration relating to the Chief Executive and Chief Officers, in line with the Pay Policy Statement. In addition, the Council must approve any salary package, as defined in the Council’s Pay Policy Statement, of £100,000 per annum or more before it was offered in respect of a new post.

Further to the Staffing Committee meeting which took place on the 17^th December the Pay Policy Statement reflected the new job titles of Chief Officers.

The Committee reviewed the Pay Policy Statement for 2026-27 (attached to the submitted report at Appendix 1) and recommended approval by Council.

(1)  Resolved:-  That the Pay Policy Statement for 2026-27 be accepted.

(2)  Recommended:-  That Council approve the Pay Policy Statement 2026-27.

To consider and receive the Gender Pay Gap Report and approve publication.

Consideration was given to the report presented by the Service Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development which provided the detail of the Gender Pay Gap information as at 31st March, 2025, that the Council was obliged to publish under reporting legislation.

In 2017, the Government introduced the Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations which required employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations every year, showing how large the pay gap in their organisation was between their male and female employees.  A positive pay gap indicated that men were paid more than women and a negative pay gap that women were paid more than men.

The gender pay gap showed the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce regardless of job role. The smaller the value of the gap, the more equal the pay gap was between genders. If a workforce had a particularly high gender pay gap, this could indicate there may be a number of issues to deal with and individual calculations may help to identify what those issues were.

The Council had up to 12 months following the annual snapshot date of 31st March, to publish this information on the Council and Government website. The deadline to report on details taken at the snapshot date of 31st March 2025 for public sector employers was 30th March 2026. The Council had chosen to include a narrative with its calculations to explain the reasons for the results and details of actions being taken to reduce or eliminate the gender pay gap.

The mean value was based on total pay for the group, divided by the number in the group being measured. The mean gender pay gap for the Council at the end of March 2025 had continued to reduce to 4.42%, down from 5.5% in 2024.The median measure (the middle numerical value in the male and female salary lists for every member of staff in the Council, ranked highest to lowest) also showed a further reduction in the overall pay gap at 4.81%, down from 8.1% in 2024.

The Council’s pay gap resulted from the fact that the Council had a greater number of female employees working in traditionally low-paid cleaning and catering roles, where there was an over-representation of female workers. In the upper quartile, where the jobs tend to be professionally qualified or dependent on several years of management or other types of experience, women were under-represented but make up 69% (up from 60% in 2024) of the top 5% of earners and females represented 4 out of 7 positions of the Strategic Leadership Team.

There was no legislative requirement to publish information on other protected characteristics, however, analysis for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) employees showed the Council had a negative 5.43% (6.11% in 2024) median pay gap and a negative 0.69% (0.17% in 2024) mean figure demonstrating that BAME employees on average were paid more per hour. This was due to a higher proportion of BAME  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37.

To consider and approve the proposed changes to the Council’s pay structure, the recommendation to transfer employees on spinal column points 02 to 09 to the next available point, delegate to the Service Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development the implementation of any further introduction of spinal column points arising from the outcome of national collective bargaining processed and recommend to Council the changes to the Council’s pay structure.

Consideration was given to the report presented by the Service Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development. The report provided detail of the implications of the deletion of spinal column point 02 (agreed as part of the April 2025 pay award, effective April 2026) and the impact of the Real Living Wage uplift of 6.7%, meaning that the Council would need to reintroduce spinal column point 10 to ensure parity between pay grades. Further, that all employees currently on spinal column points 02 to 09 were recommended to be transferred to the next available point to maintain parity in accordance with equal pay legislation.

It was possible that, following the agreement of the Local Government NJC Pay Award 2026/27, that further spinal column points may be required to be reintroduced to the Council’s Pay Structure to enable payment of salaries in accordance with the agreement. The report requested that any further changes to spinal column points within the Council’s pay structure, arising from the outcome of the collective bargaining process, may be implemented without further deference to the Council’s Staffing Committee.

The Real Living Wage had been determined at £13.45 and would be implemented by RMBC on 1st April 2026. The pay award for 2026/27 would be agreed later in the year and would be applied to salaries as soon as possible thereafter. In the interim, a temporary uplift would be applied to SCPs 3 to 7 to comply with the Real Living Wage and to ensure differentiation between SCPs. This temporary uplift was effectively an early application of the pay award, which had been budgeted for in 2026/27.

In the event that the pay award did not deliver an hourly rate of £13.45 or above at the bottom of the pay spine, the Council would be required to progress to phase 2 of the options set out in Exempt Appendix 1, Table 3, to utilise the next available unused scale point, at a further cost of £933k. Given the high possibility that this movement may be required in 2026/27 the financial impact had been built into the Council’s Budget and Council Tax Report 2026/27.

Resolved:

That Staffing Committee:

1.    Approve the proposed changes to the Council’s pay structure.

2.    Approve the recommendation to transfer employees on spinal column points 02 to 09 to the next available point.

3.    Delegate to Service Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development the implementation of any further introduction of spinal column points, arising from the outcome of national collective bargaining processes.

4.    Details of the Council’s approach to pay are included in the Council’s Pay Policy which is to be approved by Council.

To determine any item which the Chair is of the opinion should be considered as a matter of urgency.

The Chair reported that there were no urgent items of business requiring the Committee’s consideration.