Barnet Council call off plan to recover the overpayments

IMPORTANT NEWS: OVERPAYMENTS

PLEASE SEE MESSAGE SENT OUT TO BARNET COUNCIL STAFF ON FRIDAY 13 MARCH. THE MESSAGE CONFIRMS THAT STAFF WILL NOT HAVE ANY MONEY DEDUCTED FROM THEIR PAY.

Sent: 13 March 2015 15:36

To: AllStaff

Subject: Weekly message from the Acting Chief Operating Officer – Staff Pay

“You will have received an email from ‘First Team’ on 10 March entitled ‘National Pay Awards – pay adjustments’.  The email sets out details of the national pay award for local government staff and talks of the need for the Council to ‘recover overpayments’.  In my role as Acting Chief Operating Officer, I have listened to the views of staff and reflected on this.  As a consequence, I have decided that the Council should not go ahead with the recovery of these payments and, as a result, you will not see deductions to your pay, as the email suggests.

The outcome of the national pay award is that staff will receive a 2.2% pay rise, backdated to January 2015.  The Council made a decision last year to award staff a pay increase of 1% from April 2014, on the premise that the most likely outcome of the national negotiations would be a 1% pay rise backdated to April 2014.  We took this decision in good faith – ahead of the outcome of the national award – in recognition that staff had been subject to a number of years of pay freezes.

However, because the national pay award was only backdated to January rather than April, it means that the Council paid staff an additional 1% more between April – January.  I have come to the conclusion that – since it was a proactive decision by the Council to make the award last April – the Council should stick to that and not seek to recover this from your pay.  As ever, if you have a payroll query please contact HR payroll team.

In other news, our colleagues from the Adults Integrated Quality in Care Homes team attended the Skills for Care Accolades Awards this week, being shortlisted for most effective approach to integration and innovation. The CSG Procurement team were also shortlisted for the Local Government Chronicle efficiency award earlier this week. While they didn’t ultimately win, these are both fantastic achievements and demonstrate the breadth of quality services being delivered across the borough.”

Have a good weekend

John Hooton

 

Interim Chief Operating Officer