Glasgow - Golden Handcuffs Scheme

The Herald and Evening Times continue to stir up controversy over Glasgow's equal pay settlement with this alarmist article suggesting that thousands of vulnerable clients will be left without support, if there's a mass exodus of Home Care staff in the months ahead.

So I've wracked my brain and come up with brilliant solution even if I say so myself!

A pair of 'golden handcuffs' worth £120,000 (net of tax and national insurance) to each Glasgow Home Carer who stays on for the next 3 years.

Why £120,000 - I hear readers ask?

Well that's the amount the City Council 'gifted' to its outgoing director of finance, Lynn Brown, in 2016 so that Ms Brown could retire early without taking a reduction in her final salary pension.

And if you ask me £120,000 (Net) represents a great deal for the Council because instead of walking away, every Home Carer signing up would guarantee the service for the next three years while GCC gets rid of its 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme.

In effect it would be a wise investment in the carers and their clients and if GCC can show such generosity to one of its senior officials, surely the Council can show the same kind of commitment to the 'foot soldiers' who have kept the service going during the long years of the WPBR when Glasgow's Home Carers were treated as second class citizens.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17515418.glasgow-equal-pay-settlement-could-see-mass-exodus-of-home-care-staff-leaving-thousands-of-older-people-without-services-report-warns/

Glasgow equal pay settlement could see mass exodus of home care staff, leaving thousands of older people without services, report warns

By Stephen Naysmith - The Herald

Thousands of elderly and disabled people in Glasgow could be left without essential support when homecare workers receive equal pay settlement cheques, according to a new report.

Home care workers in the city are set to be major beneficiaries as the city council plans to pay out £500 million to women affected by historic discriminatory pay policies.

But as many as 1000 workers are predicted to take the opportunity to take early retirement or quit their jobs when they get their settlements, putting a question mark over the viability of the service.

Age Scotland described the estimates as "severely worrying".

The warnings come in a report by the city's Chief Social Work Officer Susanne Miller, to be presented to the Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) on Wednesday [Mar 27th].

She says that more than three quarters of all home care workers are due a settlement as part of equal pay negotiations designed to rectify historic unfairnesses which undervalued work done by women.

A significant proportion are thought likely to hand in their notice as a result, and the council fears eight out of ten of those on managerial grades could take this option.

"It is anticipated that betwee 18–40 per cent of our home care staff may choose to leave. Furthermore it is predicted that 50-80 per cent of staff in supervisory roles who are key to the day to day planning of work, assessment and supervision of front line staff may choose to leave," Ms Millar says in a briefing to HSCP members.

An additional problem is anticipated if such a loss of staff increases pressure on those who remain. Change and uncertainty could lead to more people taking sick leave, Ms Millar's report says.

This would leave care services in the city liable to lose 38-40 per cent of its capacity, she adds, and unable to meet the needs of those currently receiving home care.

"Within the community, our home care services could not sustain the service to our 5,500 service users with this loss of capacity," Ms Millar warns.

Home care is largely provided to elderly or disabled residents of the city, who may need help with getting up and dressed, or preparing meals or help with taking medicine or reminders to take it.

The service – previously provided by arms length company Cordia, but now brought back in house and rebadged as Home Care Services –is also crucial to the city's efforts to meet targets on 'bed blocking'.

Glasgow has one of the best records in the country for avoiding delayed discharges from hospital, but managing those coming home from 121 acute wards across the city means dealing with an average of 40 referrals per day.

Ms Millar says the potential crisis can be avoided if action is taken and says £30,000 has been set aside for a major recruitment campaign to find up to 400 new care workers.

However they will also need to be vetted for work with vulnerable people and trained to meet standards set by the Scottish Social Services Council. Next week's HSCP meeting will be asked to back the recruitment campaign.

Brian Sloan, Chief Executive of Age Scotland, said it was essential action was taken quickly: “If these stark predictions of a staff mass-exodus come to light then there are severely worrying consequences for the older people who rely on their care," he said.

“There are over 1000 frail older people, many living with dementia, who will be affected by this, and the service supports 40 people each day to be discharged from hospital. Without this home care these people will no doubt be stuck in hospital for far longer than they need to be which will have a negative impact on their recovery, significantly increase delayed discharge numbers and cost the NHS an eye-watering amount of money to do so."

For many older people, particularly those living alone, home care support is critical to helping them live independently and well, he said.

"The Health and Social Care Partnership has got to be ready for this and start the process of urgent recruitment of trained staff to fill any gaps which may arise. We just can’t wait to find out if this will come to pass as the cost of inaction doesn’t bear thinking about.”

A spokesman for the HSCP said: “We are currently plan for a potential loss of staff and the resultant impact this will have on services as a result of the equal pay settlement.

“A team is looking at how we can mitigate this reduction in capacity and adapt the way in which we deliver services. The precise effect on the service is unclear at this stage but it is clearly prudent to prepare for what may lie ahead.”

Glasgow - Compare and Contrast (12/01/19)

I travelled by train from Glasgow to Edinburgh before Christmas on a day when the service was disrupted for some ill-explained reason.

Now this was not the biggest hassle in the world, I have to admit, yet I was still pleased to see Nicola Sturgeon speaking up for passengers with the her subsequent comments in the media.

Nicola Sturgeon branded the number of cancellations and delays to ScotRail services in recent weeks as "unacceptable".

The first minister said travellers deserved better and that the public was owed an apology for a series of problems on Scotland's rail network.

Good for her, I said to myself at the time, although I went on to wonder why Nicola and other Glasgow MSPs have had so little to say on behalf of their local constituents about the fight for equal pay in Glasgow which everyone knows has been raging since 2007.

Now I never for a minute expected SNP MSPs to launch a full scale attack on Glasgow City Council, not least because the council is SNP-led these days.

But Glasgow's MSPs have had virtually nothing to say about the Council's WPBR pay scheme for years, or its preposterous 37-hour rule which discriminates against the Council's largely female workforce, or the FOI battle to uncover the truth about the way in which the WPBR was introduced back in 2007.

So if an equal pay settlement in Glasgow is not delivered, as promised, in the days ahead I expect the city's politicians will come under pressure as never before to speak up and explain where they stand on an issue which they have been studiously avoiding for the past 12 years.

Bravehearts vs Wee, Sleekit Cow'rin, Tim'rous Beasties (21/07/18)

I shared yesterday's posts (No 'Mean' City and Daylight is the best disinfectant) with all Glasgow councillors, as well as the city's constituency MSPs and MPs - 100 local politicians in total.

Now I haven't exactly been bowled over by the response, so far at least, but once the holiday period is over there will be a concerted effort to engage with key politicians across Glasgow including the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who represents Glasgow Southside.

Because August/September is going to be a crucial period in the fight for equal pay in Scotland's largest council - and the city's Councillors, MSPs and MPs are going to have to decide which side they are on.

Do they stand alongside senior officials with their 'golden goodbyes' and discriminatory 37-hour 'rules' - or do they stand with the council's low paid workers who have been fighting for their rights to equal pay for the past 12 years.

In other words, are they Bravehearts when it comes to equal pay or wee, sleekit cow'rin, tim'rous beasties?

Glasgow - No 'Mean' City (20/07/18)

Here is my letter to Glasgow City Council regarding the chief executive's decision to make a parting gift of £120,079 to the council's outgoing director of finance, so that this fellow senior official could access her pension early.

I have written to Scotland's public spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, asking that the circumstances surrounding this payment be investigated as a matter of urgency, as well as the absence of proper records to explain how the council's chief executive, Annemarie O'Donnell, justified her decision and this extraordinary use of public money.

I suppose you could say that when it comes to looking after the interests of its most senior council officials, Glasgow really is No 'Mean' City.

11 July 2018

Dear Ms Forrest

Glasgow City Council - Vital Records Policy

I refer to your letter dated 21 June 2018 in which you confirmed that Glasgow's chief executive, Annemarie O'Donnell, made the decision to 'gift' the sum of £120,079 to the City Council's finance director, Lynn Brown, so that Ms Brown could access her local government pension early.

Your response to my FOI request failed to explain the basis on which this decision was made by the chief executive and your letter went on to state that the Council does not hold any information to clarify how the City Council approved the expenditure (e.g. via a council committee) of such a large sum of public money.

In my view, it is inconceivable that Scotland's largest council can have no audit trail to explain the process by which this decision was reached and how the money involved was released to the Strathclyde Pension Fund (SPF).

As a result, I have now raised my concerns with the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) and, in doing so, I have drawn the Commissioner's attention to Glasgow City Council's Vital Records Policy which states, inter alia:

"The Council is committed to ensuring that all Vital Records, regardless of their format, are identified, managed appropriately and that appropriate business continuity and backup measures are put in place in order to protect critical information relating to the Council, its critical functions and its reputation"

"This policy was approved by the Information Advisory Board and has been issued as a binding Procedural Rule by the Director of Governance and Solicitor to the Council, in terms of the Council's scheme of delegated functions"

As a Glasgow citizen and council tax payer, I am minded to raise a formal complaint with the relevant authorities about the probity and governance issues surrounding this payment, as I believe the absence of proper records may constitute a serious breach of the City Council's Vital Records Policy.

What I don't understand is how this could have happened when the decision involved the council's most senior official (Annemarie O'Donnell), its director of finance and the principal adviser to the Strathclyde Pension Fund (Lynn Brown), as well as a binding Procedural Rule laid down by the Director of Governance and Solicitor to the Council (Carole Forrest).

Can I ask, therefore, if you have already taken steps to alert the Council's internal and external auditors to the absence of information which explains how Annemarie O'Donnell arrived at her decision, and how the Council approved significant expenditure which amounted to a 'gift' of £120,079 to one of its most senior officials?

I look forward to your reply which I hope will be speedy, given the circumstances, and would be grateful if you could respond to me by email at:markirvine@compuserve.com

Mark Irvine

Director of Governance and Solicitor to the Council

Carole Forrest LLB DipLP

Glasgow City Council

City Chambers George Square Glasgow G2 1DU

Hand Deliveries to: 40 John Street Glasgow G1 1JL

Our Ref: 6619148 Your Ref:

21.06.18

By email:

Dear Mr Irvine

REQUEST FOR REVIEW UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION (SCOTLAND) ACT 2002

I refer to your email of 22.05.18 which I am treating as a formal request for review of Glasgow City Council’s (“the Council”) failure to respond to your initial request for information dated 20.04.18.

On behalf of the Council, I apologise that you did not receive a response to your initial request for information. You should have received a response within the 20 working day timescales set out in the legislation and I apologise that on this occasion you did not.

YOUR REQUEST

You requested the following information:

“1) Please provide me the name and job title of the Council official who recommended that Glasgow City Council should pay £120,079 to compensate the Local Government Pension Scheme for allowing the Council's former executive Director of Finance, Lynn Brown, to access her pension benefits early?

2) Please provide me with the written explanation for this recommendation and the process by which the expenditure of this large sum of public money approved?

3) Please confirm how long the former Executive Director of Finance would otherwise have had to wait to access her pension benefits, if it were not for this generous use of public funds?”

THE REVIEW DECISION

I can confirm that the Council is treating your request for this information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOI).

The responses to the information requested are as follows:

1) Annemarie O'Donnell, Chief Executive

2) On inspecting our records, it would appear that Glasgow City Council does not hold the information which you have requested. Neither does anyone else hold it on our behalf. Therefore this information would be exempt under Section 17 of the Act. Accordingly we are unable to comply with your request.

3) We are unable to provide you with the details of how long the former ExecutiveDirector of Finance would otherwise have had to wait before being able to access her pension benefits. This information is, in our opinion, exempt from a request under Part 1 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 because of the exemption contained in section 38(1)(b) of the Act. In other words, in our opinion disclosure of the information would contravene any of the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the GDPR. If we provided you with this information, it may be possible to identify Lynn Brown’s age and therefore, we will not disclose this information. By way of assistance, all Council employees can ask to take early retirement from the age of 55.

Please note that the information provided in response to your request is, unless otherwise indicated, copyright © Glasgow City Council 2018. It is supplied to you in terms of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Any further use by you of this information must comply with the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as amended and/or the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997. In particular, any commercial use or re-use of the information provided requires the prior written consent of the Council.

If you require further clarification please e-mail me at FOIreviews@glasgow.gov.uk and I will ensure that the matter is reviewed.

RIGHT OF APPEAL

I hope you are satisfied with this response. However, if you are not you have the right to make an application within six months of receipt of this letter for a decision by the Scottish Information Commissioner.

The Scottish Information Commissioner can be contacted as follows:

Kinburn Castle, Doubledykes Road, St Andrews, KY16 9DS.

enquiries@itspublicknowledge.info

01334 464610

You can also use the Scottish Information Commissioner’s online appeal service to make an

application for a decision: www.itspublicknowledge.info/appealThereafter a decision by Scottish Information Commissioner may be appealed on a point of law to the Court of Session.

Yours sincerely

CAROLE FORREST
DIRECTOR OF GOVERNANCE AND SOLICITOR TO THE COUNCIL

Glasgow - 'Daylight is the best disinfectant' (20/07/18)

Here's a link to the Evening Times article on the parting 'gift' of £120,079 to a very senior council official so that she could access her pension early.

Now every council employee reaching 55 years of age has the right to request early retirement, but each application has to be considered on its merits and there is certainly no entitlement for a person to have their pension 'topped up' in the way that appears to have happened here.

The fact that this request involved the council's chief executive (Annemarie O'Donnell) and former finance director (Lynn Brown) demands even greater scrutiny than normal if you ask me, yet so far at least the council has been unable or unwilling to explain exactly what happened.

So I hope that the Scottish Information Commissioner and Audit Scotland will help shine a light on things and persuade the council to explain the basis of this extraordinary £120,079 payment.

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/16366922.equal-pay-campaigner-mark-irvine-quizzes-council-over-120000-retiral-payment/

Equal pay campaigner Mark Irvine quizzes council over £120,000 retiral payment

By Catriona Stewart @LadyCatHT - The Evening Times

Glasgow City Chambers

EQUAL pay campaigner Mark Irvine is demanding answers from council bosses over a £120,000 payment made after the early retiral of a senior official.

Glasgow City Council's well respected finance director Lynn Brown was granted early retiral in 2016 after 13 years in post.

In order to allow her to go, the council paid a lump sum of £120,079 to Strathclyde Pension Fund, which would have been approved by chief executive Annmarie O'Donnell.

But, following a request made under Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation, the council has failed to provide the paper trail for sanctioning the payment.

Mr Irvine is the solicitor behind the Action 4 Equality Scotland campaign to secure equal pay compensation for thousands of low paid female workers.

He said: "Glasgow's chief executive, Annemarie O'Donnell, is the highest paid local government official in Scotland, but this latest debacle makes the city look completely ridiculous - small businesses and local corner shops in Glasgow operate to higher standards.

"The generosity shown towards a senior council colleague is quite extraordinary and impossible to justify.

"Low paid workers in other parts of the council don't enjoy this kind of treatment and it's a terrible insult to those who have been fighting for their rights to equal pay for the past 12 years."

Glasgow Update (30/08/17)

Glasgow City Council (GCC) is Scotland's largest local council with a budget of well over £1.5 billion to spend every year.

Yet the Council doesn't keep 'good' records, or so it says, and has little idea, if any, about the operation of the Council's controversial Employee Development Commitment (EDC) scheme which was of enormous benefit to former bonus earning jobs when GCC's new WPBR pay arrangements were introduced back in 2006/07.

So I though I'd help the City Council out with this letter from Robert Booth, Glasgow's former Director of Land Services, which is dated 30 October 2006. The contents are reproduced below for easy reference.

From - Robert Booth, Director of Land Services

To - Norma Aird - Head of Corporate HR, Chief Executive Office, City Chambers

GRAVEDIGGERS RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

Authorisation is sought herewith for the application of a recruitment and retention payment under the Workforce Pay and Benefits package in respect of the Council's gravediggers.

You will appreciate the sensitive nature of this aspect of service delivery and I have previously indicated the mood of the workforce which casts serious doubt on the prospects of retention for this group of staff. Loss of experienced resource would eradicate the Council;'s capacity to maintain service. The resultant adverse publicity and the prospect of public concern in relation to burials must be remedied.

Accordingly, I should be pleased if you would give consideration to the inclusion of a long term recruitment and retention payment for these employees.

Robert Booth
Director of Land Services

Now isn't it absolutely remarkable that I appear to have better and more accurate information about the operation of the EDC scheme than the City Council itself.

I think I might just drop a note to the chief executive, Annemarie O'Donnell and its director of governance, Carole Forrest.

Because instead of striving to make Glasgow's pay arrangements 'open, honest and transparent' the City Council's senior officials seem intent on preventing people from understanding the truth about the EDC scheme.

If Robert Booth's letter is anything to go by, which I am sure it is, then the pay information I have requested is right under the noses of top officials like Annemarie O'Donnell and Carole Forrest.

So to characterise this exercise and my FoI request as an costly hunt for a 'needle in a haystack' is quite disingenuous of the City Council and I predict that it's a fight that the bureaucrats are ultimately bound to lose.

Glasgow, FoI and Equal Pay (29/08/17)

Here is Glasgow City Council's response to my FoI Review Request regarding the operation of its Employee Development Commitment (EDC) scheme.

Now as regular readers will recall the EDC is a controversial scheme which gave special and more favourable treatment to the former bonus earning (all male) jobs back in 2007.

In effect, these former bonus earning jobs were given a guarantee that their higher earnings were secure and would be maintained going forward, beyond the normal protection period which was supposed to end in April 2009.

Yet Glasgow City Council is claiming not to have 'good' records about the operation of the EDC scheme and that to retrieve the information I requested would require a detailed search of almost 20,000 individual files.

Which would be funny, if this bogus claim didn't make Scotland's largest council look completely inept and ridiculous.

Because I did not ask the City Council for a 'central record' of the EDC scheme - senior council officials have responded using this careful choice of words knowing perhaps full well, perhaps, that the information that I requested is held in individual departments where the Gravediggers and Gardeners worked.

Read the full details of the City Council's response below, but one thing's for sure we are a long way from the kind of 'open, honest and transparent' pay arrangements that people were promised by the new SNP-led administration.

More to follow on this subject - so watch this space.

The Review Decision

I have now carried out a review of the Council’s response to your request contained within the Decision Letter.

On reviewing the Council’s records I can advise that the Council has been able to locate some of the information you have requested.

The Employee Development Commitment (“EDC”) ran from 2007 to 2009.

The Council has located a document headed “Employees “Signed Up” to EDC”. This document has no contextual information and sits in isolation. This document appears to have been collated in 2011 and states that 2,691 staff “signed up” to the EDC, 1,313 of which were male and 1,378 of which were female.

The Council has also located spreadsheets dated April 2009 which appear to show number of staff in the EDC. These spreadsheets have no contextual information and sit in isolation. The Council has used these spreadsheets to calculate that 849 staff were in the EDC at April 2009, 455 of which were male and 394 of which were female.

Please note that the Council is not able to confirm that the above information is complete or accurate as there is no central record of the staff involved in the EDC. In order to verify the above information or to provide the number of Council employees involved in the EDC programme broken down by year and by gender as requested the Council would require to check employees’ personal records.

An employee’s participation in the EDC is not flagged on their personal record. There may be correspondence in their file which would have confirmed their participation. However, since that time paper records underwent a cleansing exercise prior to digitisation and due to the time elapsed since EDC such records may have been removed as part of the cleansing exercise.

There are approximately 13,000 current employee files and approximately 6,000 lever files which would require to be checked.

Under Section 12(1) of the Act the Council does not require to comply with a request for information if the Council estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the amount prescribed by the fee regulations. The current limit is £600. The estimated cost to comply with your request exceeds this limit and therefore the Council is unable to comply with your request.

Even if a member of staff only took 30 seconds to check each personal record and record the data this task would take approximately 158 hours to complete. This means the task would at a minimum cost £2,370 in staff costs. This does not include photocopying and printing costs. The staff time charged reflects the true pay scale of the member(s) of staff who would be involved capped at a ceiling of £15 per hour per member of staff.

As the estimated cost to comply with your request exceeds the limit of £600 the Council is unable to comply with your request.

The Council has the option of complying with requests where the costs exceed £600. However, on this occasion we have decided not to due to the resources (both financial and human) which voluntary compliance with this request would divert away from our core business.

RIGHT OF APPEAL

I hope you are satisfied with this response. However, if you are not you have the right to make an application within six months of receipt of this letter for a decision by the Scottish Information Commissioner. The Scottish Information Commissioner can be contacted as follows:

Address: Kinburn Castle, Doubledykes Road, St Andrews, KY16 9DS. Email:

enquiries@itspublicknowledge.infoTelephone: 01334 464610

You can also use the Scottish Information Commissioner’s online appeal service to make an application for a decision: www.itspublicknowledge.info/appeal

Thereafter a decision by Scottish Information Commissioner may be appealed on a point of law to the Court of Session.

Yours sincerely

CAROLE FORREST
DIRECTOR OF GOVERNANCE AND SOLICITOR TO THE COUNCIL

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