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OVERTIME LETTER

SCOTTISH PAY REFERENCE AND IMPLEMENTATION GROUP (SPRIG)

Co-chairs

Ian Reid
Pay Modernisation Director
Morar Building
Old Denny Road
Larbert
Gordon Wenham
Royal College of Nursing
Cowdray House
102 Crown Street
Aberdeen

To:

Chief Executives and HR Directors of NHS Boards,
Operating Divisions,
Special Health Boards
and other NHS Employing Organisations.
Members of SPRIG

10 December 2004

Dear Colleague

AGENDA FOR CHANGE (AfC): IMPLEMENTATION OF OVERTIME RATES

Further to our two letters of earlier today, we are now able to give you the agreed position on payment to staff for waiting list initiatives and overtime working. At the meeting of SPRIG on Wednesday 8 December these issues were discussed and advice was then submitted to the Minister.

The Minister for Health and Community Care has written to us today in response to that advice and we are now in a position to let you know the outcome. The Minister is clearly concerned that despite months of preparation and planning difficulties are being incurred at this late stage in implementing an agreement which all parties signed up to.

In relation to overtime working, since receiving SPRIG's advice the matter has been discussed today at a meeting of the Executive of the UK NHS Staff Council in London, which has agreed guidance as set out in the annex attached. The Minister in his letter to us today has asked all parties in Scotland to work to the guidance and to deploy any appropriate measures within that guidance to migrate staff onto AfC rates between now and personal assimilation. You should note however that in Scotland offsetting should apply back to 1 December rather than 1 October, given the decision already taken to honour overtime payments made to staff between 1 October and 1 December.

In his letter the Minister has also advised us of his position in relation to the treatment of waiting time initiatives. He has indicated that there can be no other option than that all staff engaged in such work will migrate to AfC. However, he has agreed, reluctantly, with SPRIG's assessment of the need to effect this migration over a longer time frame than stipulated under the AfC agreement in order to retain stability of service delivery in this area throughout that migratory period. The Minister has indicated his agreement to a regularisation and continuation of current arrangements for staff undertaking these activities for an extended period of time up to 30 June 2005 at the outside, by which time all such activity should have been brought within AfC terms and conditions. The Minister has indicated to us certain conditions around this arrangement. He is writing separately to trade unions and has asked Ian Gordon, Acting Chief Executive of the NHS in Scotland and Head of Department, to write to Chief Executives of NHS Boards.

SPRIG will be discussing the implications of this at its meeting on 15 December 2004. However the effect of this is that existing arrangements in relation to the payment of overtime and waiting list initiatives can continue in the meantime.

Yours sincerely

Ian Reid, Gordon Wenham

Co-chair SPRIG

ANNEX

Guidance on Agenda for Change from Executive of the UK Staff Council - Total Pay During Assimilation Period

We have been asked for guidance on the application of Paragraph 9.8 of the final Agreement of AfC in relation to overtime and rest day working payments.

Where partners agree locally to implement the new AfC overtime rates at the same time as assimilation the following method should be applied:

A calculation commencing on 1 October 2004 should take the total earnings for an individual under the original conditions and a similar calculation for total earnings that would have applied had AfC been operational:

B) total earnings under AfC conditions from 1 October 2004;

C) B - A = positive or negative figure.

Subject to the above calculation a positive figure will be returned to the employee as arrears. A negative figure would not be recovered, unless it was as a result of any cause other than the implementation of AfC.

Note: In Scotland the calculation should be made back to 1 December 2004, not 1 October 2004.

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