Freedom of Information

Here's my latest Freedom of Information request to South Lanarkshire Council - which is due to be answered at the end of this week.

Following the landmark ruling at the UK Supreme Court which agreed, of course, that this kind of pay information rightly belongs in the public domain - I submitted a number of new FOI requests to fill in the missing pieces of the jigsaw, so to speak.

Since then the Council has tried to muddy the waters about the pay of traditional male jobs - instead of painting a simple and clear picture of arrangements that have been in place for many years - which is par for the course in my experience.  

So, I suspect this latest FOI case is likely to end up in the hands of the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) - because South Lanarkshire is again still refusing to put its hand up and come clean and, in my experience, that normally goes hand in hand with the Council having something to hide.   


Dear South Lanarkshire Council

FOI Review Request 

I refer to the Council's letter to me letter dated 20 September 2013 and would like to submit the following Review Request.

1 In my earlier letter to Bill Dunn I said that I expected the Council to paint a clear picture which explains the pay position of these LSO jobs, given the recent decision of the UK Supreme Court. But that has not happened and instead the Council seems determined to obfuscate and muddy the waters when it is perfectly simple to explain exactly how much these jobs are paid and how their pay may have changed over time, if that claim is correct.

2 For example, the Council suddenly claims that some of these LSO 3 jobs were paid between SCP 18 and 23. Yet the original scale was always SCP 25 to 28 and I enclose a previous FOI Review Request (dated 6 September 2010) regarding this particular point.

3 The Council claims that anyone paid at SCP 29 and above was being paid 'legitimately' and in recognition of 'appropriate additions' to pay which included extra SCP points to cover: shift working, payment for public holidays, additional hours above their contracted week, weekend working and additional tasks at higher grades. But the official or evaluated SCP rate for these jobs is, of course, applied for 52 weeks of the year which has to mean that these various 'additions to pay' were incorporated in the move to an annualised salary, since an annualised salary is used to determine exactly where an employee is placed or paid on the column of SCP hourly rates, which was introduced in 2003/2004.

4 So I am asking in this Review Request for the Council to explain how these 'additions to pay' are reflected in the table of 578 LSO 3 jobs under each of the following headings:

a) shift working

b) payment for public holidays

c) additional hours above their contracted week

d) weekend working

e) additional tasks at a higher level

5 In doing so I would be grateful for confirmation that the Council routinely used personal pay preservation in the migration of LSO 3 (and other) jobs onto annualised salaries which covered previous patterns of overtime working and meant, in practice, that such employees were being paid, routinely, for significant overtime hours that they were not actually required to work. 

6 I am also challenging the Council's claim regarding the treatment of LSO 3 posts in 2010 compared to April 2013 because it seems to me that while claiming to be different, the following two paragraphs from the Council's letter dated 20 September 2013 are saying exactly the same thing. As such, I am asking for clarification of the impact that these 'additions to pay' have on these LSO 3 posts because 'additions to pay' still amount to pay at the end of the day - paid for by the public purse - and any attempt to suggest otherwise seems, to me, to be sophistry. I should also add that I regard the Council's behaviour as part of an ongoing and  deliberate strategy to conceal the true position from the council workforce, the wider public and the regulatory authorities.

2010 reference

"I would advise that at the time of this information being gathered, May 2010, Land Services Operatives were all paid in accordance with their evaluated rate and appropriate additions to pay. They received an all inclusive salary therefore the spinal column point placing detailed below would have included increments for shift working; payment for public holidays which the employees were required to work; additional hours above their contracted week, including Christmas and New Year additional working, weekend working and additional tasks at higher grades." 

2013 reference

"Following the implementation of successive living wage changes and the resulting application of revised pay arrangements the position as at today is different.  All LSO 3 employees are paid at the evaluated hourly rate with additional elements treated separately." 

• There are no LSO 3 posts with employees placed between Spinal Column Points SCP 35 to SCP 55 employed by South Lanarkshire Council as at 1 April 2013."

7 In order to establish the truth I am asking the Council to explain when and how the position changed from 2010 when LSO posts were paid an all inclusive salary -  specifically when these 'additions' were introduced, how they were calculated, the basis of the additional payments and how the 'base' salary was evaluated. 

I have been raising FOI requests regarding the pay position of these posts for a number of years and, in my experience, South Lanarkshire Council has set out to conceal and disguise the truth, dissembling wherever possible, even to the point of rejecting my requests as 'vexatious' at one stage.

In a recent landmark decision involving South Lanarkshire Council, the UK Supreme Court made it clear that this kind pay information belongs in the public domain.    

So I expect South Lanarkshire Council to be mindful of its duties under FOISA by providing a clear explanation on what constitutes total pay in SCP terms, how total pay is affected (if at all) by any 'additions to pay' and how this picture has changed over time.  

I would be grateful if you could reply to me by email at: markirvine@compuserve.com    

Kind regards

Mark Irvine