Foot-Dragging Councils (20/04/16)
No doubt readers will agree that this is particularly relevant given Nicola Sturgeon's recent comments about getting tough with council bosses in relation to equal pay.
The background to this latest scandal is that over a year ago, A4ES equal pay claimants in North Lanarkshire Council won a decision in the Glasgow Employment Tribunal which allowed some of the claimants to have their awards paid on a pensionable basis.
In effect those who qualified would benefit from receiving a larger, tax free, lump sum and a higher annual pension going forward, due to the employees and the employer both making additional contributions to the local government pension scheme (LGPS).
A year on and NLC has still to pass this information on the Strathclyde Pension Fund (SPF) and even though A4ES has provided the relevant figures as well, SPF (who manage the fund on behalf of member councils) is not willing to accept information from anyone other than the employer, i.e. Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council.
To add insult to injury, back on 7th March 2016 SPF told the lawyers (HBJ Gateley) who are acting on behalf of the A4ES claimants that they had, in fact, received the necessary details from North Lanarkshire on 3rd March 2016 .
But incredibly, some six weeks later, on 19th April 2016, SPF suddenly announced that they are not in possession of the information that they require from NLC - without any explanation as to why they said the exact opposite on 7th March 2016.
So the long suffering, low paid claimants go round and round in circles while waiting on senior officials in NLC and SPF to get their fingers out and sort out this appalling mess; officials who, in many cases, are being paid very big salaries (many tens of thousands of pounds a year) from the public purse.
I am obviously highlighting the issue on the blog site and bringing this latest debacle to the attention of MSPs and candidates in the Scottish Parliament elections including Nicola Sturgeon at: nicola.sturgeon@snp.org
Readers of the blog site can play a valuable role as, so don't be shy about sending an email asking politicians what they are doing to help their local constituents.
