Freedom of Information

Here's the latest Freedom of Information (FOI) request to South Lanarkshire Council.

The request revolves around a claim made by the council - that key building blocks of its job evaluation scheme (JES) were externally verified by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) - but the truth is that this independent scrutiny never took place.

So, South Lanarkshire's job evaluation scheme has never been given a clean bill of health - by the EOC or anyone else.

The other claim made in the newsletter was that the council's internal JES would be compared to the nationally approved JES - in an effort to reassure council staff (via the trade unions) that the workforce was not being sold a 'pig in a poke'.

Since then precious little information has been made available to explain the workings of the South Lanarkshire JES - and how one group of jobs has been graded and paid - compared to another.

Hence the reason for this latest FOI request - we will keep readers posted on the council's response - but in the meantime ask yourself this:

"Why do the unions have so little to say - on an issue of such vital importance to their members?

Dear South Lanarkshire Council

Freedom of Information Request

I would like to make the following enquiry under the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002. The background to my request is explained in the following extract from a South Lanarkshire Council staff magazine on Single Status:

Single Status in South Lanarkshire Council

“The Competence Initiative Framework has been verified in terms of equality factors and our commitment to the Trade Unions was that we would additionally benchmark the results against the national job evaluation scheme.”

I am requesting details of the following information:

1. All data input to the Gauge software which was used assist in benchmarking the internal 555 JES results against the national (COSLA) job evaluation scheme

2. All data output from the Gauge software which was used to assist in benchmarking the internal 555 JES results against the national (COSLA) job evaluation scheme

I understand, from a previous enquiry, that South Lanarkshire Council does hold this information and look forward to receiving the relevant details from you in due course.

Kind regards



Mark Irvine

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