This pay and conditions of service claim is submitted by the Officers’ Side of the Soulbury Committee national negotiating body, comprising the Association of Educational Psychologists, the National Education Union and Prospect.
The professional workforce covered by the terms of the Soulbury national agreement continues to support local authorities in discharging their statutory responsibilities in respect of schools and other educational settings, children and young people (CYP) and their families. Despite the many ongoing changes in local government and local authority functions, these remain key responsibilities in ensuring the highest standards of education and achievement for our young people.
The Soulbury Officers’ Side represents educational improvement professionals, educational psychologists and managers of young people’s and community services employed by local authorities.
We remain committed to the national negotiating arrangements and the national pay and conditions agreement for the Soulbury workforce. We believe that it helps employers accommodate these professional groups within a pay and conditions structure tailored to their specific needs and interests.
In ‘normal times’, Soulbury staff work with the whole school system and educational settings, both maintained and academies, to co-ordinate, to disseminate key information and to work with many stakeholders and partners ensuring continuity of service and provision.
We must pay tribute to the incredible professionalism and flexibility of the Soulbury workforce in their response to the unprecedented challenges posed by the Coronavirus pandemic for the last year. This underlines the need for them to be properly valued and supported in terms of pay and conditions.
The Officers’ Side the Officers' Side agreed reluctantly to accept the pay offer for 2020-21, which included a commitment to further discussions at Joint Secretarial level on a without prejudice basis with regard to the current Soulbury pay structure. We were disappointed by the lack of progress in the discussions regarding our proposals for changes to the pay scales for Education Improvement Professionals and Educational Psychologists. The proposals would have cost very little when few Soulbury officers are paid at the bottom of the Soulbury pay scales and we are aware that some are paid more than the maximum of the appropriate scale. We seek more meaningful engagement on structural issues and a joint working party to consider the Soulbury pay structure should be a priority for the Soulbury Committee.
It is welcome that the Local Government Association responded to the pay freeze in the public sector as follows:
"The Government has no formal role in the decisions around annual local government pay increases which are developed through negotiations with the trade unions.
"Calculations around the affordability of pay increases take full account of the financial settlement given overall to local government but this is not the only factor involved. Thus, the Government cannot automatically impose a pay freeze in local government unless it uses a legislative route to do so.”
The priorities of the submission are as follows:
(1) A significant pay increase of at least 7 per cent on all pay points, which will begin to address the substantial real terms cuts which Soulbury employees have, like other public sector workers, suffered since 2010.
(2) A joint working group to consider the Soulbury pay structure and how the work of Soulbury officers has changed during the pandemic.