NLC Update (14/10/14)
In responding to my recent FoI request North Lanarkshire Council provided the following link to the Council's web site which provides details of the performance bonuses paid to senior officials in 2013/14.
Now the total for the Council Management Team (CMT) comes to £43,786.57 in the latest year for which figures are available, but to be added to this are the performance bonuses paid to 21 'Heads of Service' posts which range from £4,684.68 to £9,485.11.
So the Heads of Service posts must have cost the taxpayer between £98,378.28 (i.e. 21 x £4,684.68) and £199,187.31 (i.e. 21 x £9,485.11) on top of the CMT bill of £43,786.57 which means that in 2014 North Lanarkshire Council spent up to £242,973.88 in performance bonuses for its most senior and highest paid officials.
I find that quite amazing, I have to say.
Especially when the rest of the Council workforce has faced a policy of pay restraint and at a time when the Council has been forced to own up to a serious mistakes and errors over the application of its job evaluation scheme (JES), which has led to thousands of jobs, such as low paid Home Carers, being wrongly 'scored' and graded.
Now if you ask me, this kind of performance merits an independent inquiry, not big bonuses for senior managers and I hope MSPs will start asking questions about the Council's actions in the Scottish Parliament.
The council's management team
Our directors
Gavin Whitefield CBE, Chief Executive
The Chief Executive within North Lanarkshire is the council's chief policy advisor. He is the main link between council officials and elected members. He is responsible for corporate governance and seeks to ensure the co-ordination of the organisation and all its functions. Of primary concern to the Chief Executive is the overall direction and performance of the council.
Salary 2013/14: £136,578.03 (plus performance-related pay of £11,395.26)
Expenses reimbursed: £132.80
June Murray, Executive Director, Corporate Services
Corporate Services is the title of a group of mainly support and professional services for the council, which has the ambition of delivering high quality and cost effective support for the council, its elected councillors and the services the council provides.
While some important direct services to the public are part of the service grouping - such as licensing and the registration service - for the most part, Corporate Services provide a major range of support services without which the council could not operate effectively.
These range from committee and decision making arrangements to property maintenance, from health and safety to architectural services, from legal advice to staff recruitment, from employee development to property management, from support to elected councillors to quantity surveying.
Salary 2013/14: £110,831.16* (plus performance-related pay of £7444.15)
Expenses reimbursed: £0
Paul Jukes, Executive Director, Environmental Services
Environmental Services is responsible for the service delivery of six major services within the council: Roads and Transportation, Planning and Development, Protective Services, Facility Support Services, Land Services, and Regeneration and Infrastructure.
This brings together key services with direct responsibility for environmental issues, both strategic and operational. This amalgamation provides fresh opportunities for strategic development, collaborative working and improved service delivery.
Salary 2013/14: £114,045.72 (plus performance-related pay of £9,247.50)
Expenses reimbursed: £110.72
Alistair Crichton, Executive Director, Finance and Customer Services.Finance and Customer Services is responsible for financial management within the council and developing the council's Customer First Strategy. Finance and Customer Services sets and monitors the council's budget and prepares the annual accounts and provides financial advice; makes arrangements for collection of all income due to the council including council tax, non-domestic rates and income from service charges and deals with the procurement and payment of goods and services and the provision of payroll and internal audit services.
The council's E-government and Service Development division is responsible for the development and operation of the council's information technology systems and for driving forward the Customer First agenda.
Salary 2013/14: £114,045.72 (plus performance-related pay of £9,247.50)
Expenses reimbursed: £0
Duncan McKay, Executive Director, Housing and Social Work Services
Housing and Social Work Services are responsible for providing the following a range of services including managing estates, offering housing and maintaining waiting lists, homelessness services, warden services, tenancy services and the maintenance of the site for gypsy travellers.
Housing services also provide the anti social task force services. These are provided through a network of 12 First Stop Shops and five neighbourhood offices.
Social Work services provide a wide range of social work support to individuals and families through six area teams and two sub offices. The range of services includes children's and families' services, community care services, justice services and advice services. Social work services are also provided at two hospitals in North Lanarkshire.
Approximately 12,300 people receive services either directly provided by the council or arranged through independent sector providers.
Salary 2013/14: £95,174.91* (plus performance-related pay of £6,452.16)
Expenses reimbursed: £266.39
Andrew Sutherland, Executive Director, Learning and Leisure Services
The main aim of Learning and Leisure Services is to maintain excellent frontline services, upgrade nurseries, schools and community facilities across Lanarkshire and delivering a curriculum that meets the needs of all learners and helps improve levels of literacy and numeracy.
The service aims to encourage parental involvement and targets the health agenda by promoting healthy eating and physical activity, extending sporting opportunities for young people.
There is also a focus on supporting local communities to engage in community planning and actively engaging with staff to deliver quality services across the board.
Salary 2013/14: £64,841.61*
Expenses reimbursed: £99.69
*new appointment/salary represents only part of financial year
Other chief officers
Individual service delivery within each directorate is the responsibility of a Head of Service. There were 24* Heads of Service whose salaries in 2013/14 ranged between £17,076.98 and £94,580.19 plus performance-related pay between £4,684.68 and £9,485.11. The expenses reimbursed for this group in 2013/14 totals £1,245.65.
*There are 21 Head of Service posts but, due to promotion and retirement, a total of 24 people filled these posts in 2013/14.
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North Lanarkshire News (13 October 2014)
I submitted an FoI request to North Lanarkshire back in September about a highly controversial performance pay or 'bonus' scheme introduced some years ago, but which applies only to the council's most highly paid officials.
Now as I submitted this request I didn't really believe that this scheme would still be in operation because a policy of pay restraint has been in place for council workers for some years now.
So why would North Lanarkshire Council still be paying big performance bonuses to its top brass?
Not just that because the senior officials of the Council have not exactly covered themselves in glory in recent years on the subject of equal pay, never mind being deserving of big bonus payments for 'exceptional' performance.
But what do you know?
Turns out that the scheme is alive and kicking, according to the Council's response to my FoI request which I find scarcely believable, especially after the Council was forced to admit in the Glasgow Employment Tribunal that senior managers have incorrectly scored and graded thousands of jobs - including those of Home Carers, for example.
"So exactly how does this merit a performance bonus for Gavin Whitefield, North Lanarkshire's chief executive and other senior officials?", I ask myself in all seriousness.
I will share the details of the latest payments on the blog site tomorrow, but in the meantime here's a previous post which explains the background to this ongoing scandal.
Council Bigwigs (14 March 2014)
Here's another post from the blog site archive about North Lanarkshire Council which speaks for itself if you ask me - the only thing I would add is that given recent events in the Employment Tribunal, the officials involved should now be asked to hand these ridiculous bonuses back.
Because their performance has been shoddy, to say the least, in terms of looking after the interests of the workforce, so given what we know now how can the Council's senior managers defend these bonus payments?
The whole sorry business is enough to make a banker blush.
Pay Freeze Hypocrites ( 26 March 2012)
The Sunday Herald has exposed a secret pay deal involving big bonus payments to some of the council's most senior officials - which must have been approved by the Labour Group that runs North Lanarkshire Council (NLC).
The truth has been dragged out of North Lanarkshire Council - and shows that 29 senior staff scooped approximately £184,000 in extra payments - chief executive Gavin Whitefield being the biggest winner with an extra £12,050 on top of his £136,848 salary.
Which must make other council workers hopping mad - because at a time when their pay is being frozen - the chief executive is awarded an 9% pay increase.
How's that for hypocrisy and double standards?
The Sunday Herald goes on to point out that five executive directors - who earn salaries of £113,250 a year - all received more than £9000 - as did the assistant chief executive John Ellerby.
And more than 20 heads of service - on salaries between £77,166 and £85,761 - each took home bonus payments of approximately £4000 to £6000.
Now the council calls these extra payments performance related pay - but they are really just bonuses by another name.
Apparently only a select group of people can access such payments - and I imagine the scheme works in only one direction in the sense that a senior official's core salary is guaranteed - so the chief executive can never earn less than £136,848 a year.
In which case how can it be a genuine performance based scheme - if people's pay can only go up but never down?
The salaries of all council chief executives is determined by collective bargaining - in a similar way to other groups of council employees - via a Scottish Joint Negotiating Committee (SJNC).
On the SJNC for chief executives and chief officials - where COSLA represents the employers' interests and Unison is the main trade union - salaries for chief executives are set as part of a Scotland-wide agreement - and the pay of Glasgow's chief executive always comes out on top.
Because Glasgow is by far the largest council - and by and large that is what any sensible person would expect.
But there is no provision in the Scotland-wide salary agreement - for locally determined performance pay - since that would be against the spirit of national bargaining and would be potentially discriminatory as well - especially if such payments are only available to elite groups of senior staff.
So the whole thing's a disgrace if you ask me.
In many ways it reminds me of the secret 'top-up' payments made by Glasgow City Council - to councillors who acted as Chairs of its arm's length external organisations (such as Cordia) - or ALEOs as they became known.
Regular readers will remember that these payments were stopped by the Scottish Government - but only after an independent enquiry criticised Glasgow's top-up payments - as unjustified, unnecessary and a complete waste of taxpayers' money.
So I would be interested to hear how a Labour-run council can justify this kind of behaviour.
Especially at a time when thousands of people in North Lanarkshire Council are still fighting for equal pay.
How can the senior Labour councillors who signed off on this deal - look a low paid worker in the eye without feeling a huge sense of embarrassment and shame?
And have you noticed how the tame Labour unions have nothing to say - just as they did over equal pay the unions seem to have lost their voices.
Roll on the local council elections on 3rd May, I say - there is a day of reckoning coming and the sooner it comes the better.
If I had a vote in North Lanarkshire in May, I'd vote for a party which promised to end the scandal of Labour's secret bonus payments to the council's most senior and well paid staff.
