Glasgow's WPBR - Handwritten Notes

Senior officials in Glasgow City Council have been fighting a desperate battle behind the scenes to prevent a set of Handwritten Notes on the 'unfit for purpose' WPBR from being made public. 

Here is my appeal letter requesting an adjudication from the independent Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) which concludes as follows:

"In summary, my view is that the Council's motivation for refusing to release this information stems from a desire to protect the interests of senior officials, past and present, whereas the far more important issue is effective oversight of public affairs which means empowering the public to understand what has been done in their name - with hundreds of millions of pounds of public money." 

I understand that the Scottish Information Commissioner will issue their decision any day now, but you would be forgiven for asking why do I have to go to such lengths when Glasgow City Council claims to be a 'world leader' for openness and transparency.

  

 09 January 2019

Daren Fitzhenry 

Scottish Information Commissioner

Kinburn Castle

Doubledykes Road

St Andrews

Fife

KY16 9DS

By email to: enquiries@itspublicknowledge.info

Dear Mr Fitzhenry

Glasgow City Council (GCC) – FOISA Appeal

I would like to apply for an adjudication by the Scottish Information Commissioner over a FOISA Request I submitted to Glasgow City Council on 10 August 2018. The grounds of my application are set out below.

1) Glasgow City Council decided to introduce new 'equality proofed' pay arrangements towards the end of 2005 in response to a flood of equal pay claims from low paid, predominantly female  employees who were paid much less than male council workers in comparable male dominated jobs.

2) The Council decided to engage external consultants to work with its senior council officials to devise a completely new job evaluation system and pay scheme which became known as the WPBR (Workforce Pay and Benefits Review).

3) In doing so, the Council rejected the Scottish Joint Council job evaluation scheme (JES) which had previously been recommended for use in all 32 Scottish councils by COSLA (the employers' body) and the national trades unions (Unison, GMB and TGWU at the time). 

4) £250,000 of public money had already been spent on developing the SJC JES, yet for reasons known only to itself Glasgow City Council decided to reject the 'bespoke' JES scheme specifically created for Scottish local government - and set about reinventing the wheel with its own in-house WPBR pay scheme.

5) The WPBR was introduced in January 2007, at significant and additional public cost, and was immediately criticised as a sham because the new pay arrangements simply preserved all of the gender-based pay differentials as the old pay arrangements, i.e. traditional male jobs continued to be paid much more favourably than comparable female dominated jobs.

6) A legal battle in the Employment Tribunals ensued culminating in August 2017, in a landmark judgement at the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court, which condemned the WPBR as 'unfit for purpose'. In December 2017 the Council tried to overturn this decision by seeking  leave to appeal the 'unfit for purpose' judgment in the UK Supreme Court, but Glasgow's appeal  was rejected in another (unanimous) judgement by the Court of Session.

7) In 2018 Glasgow City Council finally stopped 'defending the indefensible' by agreeing to scrap the WPBR and replace its in-house scheme with the Scottish Joint Council JES which had been previously rejected back in 2005-2007. 

8) Since 2005, Scotland's largest council has spent well over £3 million devising and defending an 'unfit for purpose' pay scheme and has also run up an enormous equal pay bill which will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds. Glasgow City Council currently faces 14,000 equal pay claims and number is increasing by the day.          

9) The 'handwritten notes' I have requested are clearly crucial to understanding exactly what went on with the WPBR back in 2005-2007, yet the Council's objection to releasing this  information is that disclosure would 'prejudice the good conduct of public affairs'.

10) In my view this is a bogus, hypocritical argument which is designed to protect senior officials in Glasgow from proper public scrutiny. Hundreds of millions of pounds of public money will be spent in clearing up this appalling mess, but the Council's defence comes down to the following argument which is made under Section 30 (b) (ii) of FOISA 2002.

"Some of the information consists of notes from meetings of the Council’s senior management team and is, in my opinion, exempt from disclosure on the basis that its release would prejudice substantially, or be likely to prejudice substantially, the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation. This is because releasing the information would undermine the effectiveness of decision making within the Council’s senior management team."

11) I reject the Council's assertion because the 'handwritten notes' relate to what was happening back in 2005 to 2007 and while they are enormously important historical documents their release  cannot reasonably have a detrimental effect on the Council's decision-making processes in 2019. 

12) Likewise the Council's arguments under Section 30 (c) of FOISA are equally ludicrous, in my view, since the conduct of public affairs can only be improved if the public understands what led Scotland's largest council to introduce an 'unfit for purpose' pay which has since proved to be an  enormously costly and unprecedented error of judgement . 

13) I note the Council has dropped its previous (and bogus) objection to the release of the handwritten notes information under Section 12 (1) of FOISA and I can confirm that I have no problem with 'personal information' being redacted so long as there are proper grounds for doing so under Section 38 (1) (b) of FOISA 2002.   

14) In summary, my view is that the Council's motivation for refusing to release this information stems from a desire to protect the interests of senior officials, past and present, whereas the far more important issue is effective oversight of public affairs which means empowering the public to understand what has been done in their name - with hundreds of millions of pounds of public money. 

I look forward to hearing from you in due course and if you require any further details or clarification at this stage, please contact me on XXXXX XXXXXX or by e-mail at markirvine@compuserve.com

Kind regards


Mark Irvine