North Lanarkshire Update

I've had lots of emails over the past few days posing the following question in a number of different ways:

'Who the hell is in charge of North Lanarkshire Council's late-running job evaluation (JE) exercise?' which, as regular readers, know has been surrounded in secrecy and should have been completed before the end of December 2015. 

Now the answer to that question is the Council's chief executive, now Paul Jukes, because the CEO is the so-called 'head of the paid service' and so the buck stops with him, in a professional sense at least.

But I was sure I submitted a freedom of information (FoI) request on this very subject and, lo and behold, I was right. 

So here is a previous update to the blog site confirming that Iris Wylie, NLC's head of human resources, has day-to-day responsibility for the JE review.

As I said back in August 2015 this news didn't exactly augur well for the future and, as regular readers know, Iris played a pivotal role in the 2006/07 JE scheme which was, of course, torn to pieces by Daphne Romney QC (the A4ES barrister) at the long-running Employment Tribunal in Glasgow.

I've written quite a few posts about  Iris Wylie's involvement in the NLC equal pay debacle over the years which I'll re-publish to remind council employees what they're up against.

In the meantime, I'm going to change my middle name to Nostradamus.

North Lanarkshire Update (01/08/15)

Here's an FOI request I submitted to North Lanarkshire Council recently along with the Council's response which confirms that Iris Wylie is the senior official with day- to-day responsibility for overseeing the job evaluation review of various NLC jobs that is currently underway.

Now this surprised me somewhat, I have to say, because Iris was in post as 'head of human resources' throughout the period when North Lanarkshire Council made such a hash of its pay arrangements which resulted in thousands of equal pay claims being lodged with the Employment Tribunals.

Regular readers will recall that NLC has brought in an external adviser to assist with the current review of jobs which were found not to have been assessed and graded properly by the Employment Tribunals, due to 'errors' or 'mistakes' on the Council's part which have never been properly explained, as far as I know.

So let's hope things go much better this time around although I have to admit I can't find much information about the progress of the review which doesn't augur well for the future.

North Lanarkshire Council's FOI response

Having investigated, I can advise that the name and job title of the relevant officer is as follows: -

 Iris Wylie, Head of Human Resources

  8 July 2015

Gavin Whitefield

Chief Executive

North Lanarkshire Council

BY E-MAIL TO: whitefieldg@northlan.gov.uk

Dear Mr Whitefield

FOISA Request 

I refer to the attached exchange of correspondence with North Lanarkshire Council and would like to make the following request under the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002.

1 Please confirm the name and job title of the NLC official with day-to-day management responsibility for overseeing the job evaluation review of Council jobs that is currently underway and for reporting on these matters to June Murray, Executive Director of Corporate Sevices?

I look forward to your reply and would be grateful if you could respond to me by e-mail to: markirvine@compuserve.com

    

Kind regards

Mark Irvine