Agenda item

At this point, Officers present re-affirmed their interest and withdrew from the meeting for this item only.  The Head of People and Organisational Development and the Democratic Services Officer remained in the meeting.

Councillor D. Jones, Cabinet Member for Corporate Services and Equality introduced the report and explained that it was a requirement of the Localism Act 2011 for the Council to produce a Pay Policy Statement for each financial year as detailed in the circulated report.

Members welcomed the continuing reduction in the gap between the lowest and highest paid officers and asked if there was potential to reduce the gap further or was this governed by the difficulty in appointing to senior posts and retaining staff in some sections, what work was taking place to address this.

Officers explained that work was taking place looking at the recruitment and retention of staff.  A recruitment taskforce has been set up to identify areas of concern but overall Neath Port Talbot does not have issues with retaining staff especially at a senior level.

In addition, pay benchmarking takes place across the 22 authorities in Wales for senior posts and nationally social workers pay was being considered across Wales

All Wales networking meetings are used as a forum to discuss any issues in regard to an inability to recruit to posts or retain staff.  Pay was only one of the issues when recruiting staff the recruitment campaign also focusses on the many other positives that working for Neath Port Talbot brings.