£9m equal pay claims

Equal pay claims will cost Oldham Council almost £9 million.

The authority’s newly published accounts show that £8.87 million was included in 2007/8 for equal pay claims during the year.

And director of finance John Bland says he believes the amount should cover any outstanding liabilities. The council began offering its staff payments to offset employment tribunal claims in 2007.

Then it put £7 million on offer to about 1,700 employees, mainly women in cleaning and catering roles. The compensation is based on a 1997 agreement called single status, drawn up to harmonise pay rates between white collar and manual council workers. But another element was job evaluation, to check that equal work of equal value was paid the same rate. And this has revealed anomalies where workers, mainly women, had been paid less than men.

The offers — ranging from £60 up to £8,000 — were intended to head off action by solicitors offering no-win, no-fee services. They are acting for almost 300 Oldham women who say they will fight for more compensation at tribunals.

The revelation comes ahead of the publication of Oldham’s overall job evaluation findings, expected in the autumn.

Bury Council has already published its job evaluation findings, covering 4,000 staff, which will cost the town £2.7 million. They showed 42 per cent got a pay increase, 28 stayed the same and 30 per cent went down, some by as much as £10,000.




Rise in top earners

A TOTAL of 185 teachers and council officers were paid more than £50,000 by Oldham Council, the authority’s newly-published accounts reveal.

The figures for 2007/08 show that chief executive Andrew Kilburn’s salary was in the top bracket of £150,000 to £159,000.

The remainder are 108 teachers and 76 council staff.

And 116 of them earn between £50,000 to £60,000.

Three get £110,000 to £120,000 and another two get £100,000 to £110,000.

There are 50 people earning between £60,000 and £80,000, nine between £80,00 and £90,000, and four on £90,000 to £100,000.

The top earners have risen from in the previous year.




Counting the cost of Beal Valley decision

Oldham is still paying for the decision not to tip noxious waste at the Beal Valley golf course site, the council’s newly published accounts confirm.

The 2000 Liberal Democrat administration voted to stop plans to tip noxious waste at the site off Meek Street, Heyside.

But it had to re-negotiate the deal with the site’s operators, the Casey Group, at a cost of £6.3 million.

This included repaying tipping fees already paid, £500,000 for the developer’s losses and two cash payments of £487,000 for extending inert waste tipping in 2009 and 2010. The Beal Valley Reserve fund was created to repay the tipping fees in six annual instalments, and last year £140,000 was paid out, leaving £341,000 in the fund.

The Beal Valley Compensation Reserve was also set up to pay Casey’s for the cost of running the site for an extra two years until 2010, by setting aside £125,000 a year.

The accounts show that the compensation fund has now reached £750,000.

In 2004, the council, then under Labour administration, voted for the land to be turned into a municipal golf course at the end of the tipping period, possibly by 2011.


Schools are better off

Oldham’s 103 schools have £8.6 million in their balances, up £1 million from last year, Oldham Council’s newly published accounts have revealed.

But a number of schools have also overspent on their balances, totalling £197,000.