Agenda and minutes

Items
No. Item

1.

Question from: County Councillor Elwyn Vaughan Subject: Bank holiday staff costs

 

Question From:

County Councillor Elwyn Vaughan

Subject:

Bank holiday staff costs

Question To:

County Councillor Jake Berriman

Portfolio Holder for a Connected Powys

 

Question:

 

In view of the extra bank holiday this month, please confirm the staff costs for Powys council for this day.

 

Minutes:

Response by the Cabinet Member:

 

In November 2020, the Government announced that there was to be an additional bank holiday to celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on Friday 3 June 2022.  In accordance with the National Local Government Pay and Conditions, all employees are entitled to a holiday with normal day’s pay on the additional bank holiday.  The Council did however ensure that essential services were maintained, with employees working eligible for enhanced plain time payments or a day off in lieu.

 

The staff costs for the additional bank holiday on 3rd June 2022 fall into two elements:

 

1.           Unproductive time whereby the staff were on leave on 3rd June or on a later substitute day.

2.           The additional public holiday pay enhancements for staff who worked that day.

 

The quickest calculation for the staffing cost of one days unproductive time, based on 1/260ths of the Councils pay bill, is circa £700k; however to establish the actual figure looking at work patterns, this would take a considerable amount of time.

 

For those who worked on 3rd June 2022, some have submitted claims in time for the June 2022 payroll, which totals £6k including oncosts.  However, staff tend to claim a month in arrears so there are likely to be more claims, but it is unlikely to be material overall.

 

It is also worth noting that as the additional bank holiday fell within the schools half term and the substitute day for School based staff is not until Monday 18th July 2022 (these have however been factored into the estimated unproductive time).

 

However, for many salaried staff the work not completed that day would be completed upon their return and managed within their ongoing work and flexible working arrangements over the following weeks.  So, in most cases there would not be an additional financial burden.  There may also be some costs that would be saved from an additional non-working day, eg. Cleaning costs, which would also need to be factored in.

 

To arrive at an exact figure, it will be difficult and very time-consuming task as we would need to check back every work pattern and any additional payment processed for that day, week, or month with the managers concerned, to clarify whether the payment arose from working on 3rd June as some do enter claims using week-ending or month-ending totals.  Making an analogy of how the FOI process operates, we estimate that this would take in excess of 18 hours of officer time to undertake, in response to which we would not be obliged under the legislation to complete the exercise and provide the data.