The report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods) is now attached.

The Committee considered a report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods) that sought approval to apply a 10% market supplement rate to the role of Highways Development Specialist (currently evaluated at Grade SS1 £60,857 to £65,865) with the flexibility to increase the uplift to 15%.

The creation of the role of Highways Development Specialist was approved by the Personnel Committee in June 2019 as part of the overall Highways structure, however because of the importance of the role, the service worked closely with Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) who seconded an officer for a period of 8 months to establish systems and processes to support the development of the pipeline. This secondment ended in December 2019.  The role was advertised in December 2019, however, the response was disappointing with only 5 applications being received and in January 2020, two applicants were interviewed however no appointment was made as the candidates could not demonstrate the required skills and level of experience needed for the role.

A benchmarking exercise was undertaken of comparable roles across the region and nationally.  The salaries of similar vacancies advertised varied between £66,000 to £76,000 per annum. The strongest and closest comparable roles are Strategic Manager Highways & Transport (Isle of Wight) and Divisional Manager - Transportation & Highways (Liverpool City Council). Salaries ranged between £66,629 - £76,278 for these roles.  To ensure the Council could attract candidates who may be leaving existing permanent jobs or commuting from outside Manchester to apply for the role, it was proposed that a market rate recruitment supplement of 10% (£6,586) be applied to the role. This would take the overall salary to £72,451 which was the equivalent to the penultimate SCP 23 of SS2 and was also the mid-point of other comparable salaries of similar roles offered by competitors.

It was explained that this supplement also took into account the Council’s policy and normal practice in that the salary would be fixed at £72,451 (with yearly reviews) as normal practice was to reduce the market supplement payment each year to offset against the cost of living award in order to keep the overall salary package unchanged.

Due to the specialist nature of the role, if there was no success in attracting and appointing a suitable candidate, it was proposed that flexibility be granted to be able to increase the market rate recruitment supplement payment to 15% (£9,879) taking the overall salary package to £75,744.

Decision

The Committee agrees to apply a market rate recruitment supplement to the post of Highways Development Specialist with immediate effect.  This has the effect of raising the annual salary to £72,451(10%) or up to £75,744 (15%).

The report of the Strategic Director (Neighbourhoods) is now attached.

As the meeting was started and then adjourned this item was deferred until the meeting was to resume on Wednesday 25 March 2020.