Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Councillor Miners.

There were no declarations of interest.

The minutes of the meeting held on 31 March 2011, were agreed as a true and accurate record.

Councillor Holdich commented on the policy which had been introduced for the Staff Car Parking Charges Scheme and requested that a review be conducted to establish if it had been allocated on a fair basis for all staff including care workers employed by service providers, council employees and teachers employed directly through the schools and whether the scheme was working towards meeting the saving objectives. 

Councillor Fitzgerald also commented that there seemed to be some discrepancies and teething problems over who was being charged for car parking. Councillor Fitzgerald further commented that a review of non-city centre locations should be undertaken.

Members were advised that there had been three non city centre locations where the Council was experiencing some issues in terms of implementation and that in some cases staff were parking legally on the surrounding roads.  Mike Kealey, Acting Head of HR, advised that the scheme was working well with the exception of those few areas. 

It was agreed that the Car Parking Scheme would be reviewed to establish if a fair system had been implemented.

The Committee received a report and presentation from the Acting Head of Human Resources, Mike Kealey, on a number of employment policies following a referral from the Joint Consultative Forum, which had met on 27 June 2011.

The report sought the agreement of the Committee to implement changes      to employee terms and conditions as appended to the report, thus ensuring that the Council maintained up to date and legal employment policies.

Disciplinary Policy and Procedure

The following questions observations, comments were made by Members:

·        Clarification was sought on the definition of what constituted serious misconduct, gross misconduct, acts of insubordination, less serious acts of insubordination and the abuse of working hours?  Members were advised that the wording applied to any incident depending on what the circumstances were at the time it had occurred and that it was hard to legislate against a manager’s interpretation.  Part of the support provided by Human Resources for the process would involve consistency checks which would include working alongside the Council’s Legal Department.

·        A question was raised about how policies would be implemented for teachers currently employed directly by the schools and whether a fair and consistent approach inline with the Council would be taken to deal with disciplinary matters?  Members were advised that the Council’s Human Resources team would share the policies with the Education Personnel Management which advised on Human Resources for schools and that the policies would eventually need to be signed of by the Joint Education Unions. The Trade Union representative further advised Members that the Voyager and Thomas Deacon schools had adopted the employment policies.

·        Clarification was sought over whether Human Resources would include some wording within the disciplinary policy to protect the Council’s name being brought into disrepute by staff using social web sites?  Members were advised that the disciplinary policy did include wording to this effect. 

·        Further clarification was sought on how the Council would manage comments made by staff whilst not on duty?  Members were advised that wording was included in the policy to protect the Council from any deliberate damage to or use of council property or name or conduct which was likely to discredit the Council even whilst a member of staff was not on duty.

·        Members commented that there should be a time limit set for the grievance and disciplinary process and that a checking mechanism should be introduced to ensure that action had taken place within a six month period.  Members were advised that the disciplinary policy did outline that all cases for disciplinary and grievances would be dealt with promptly.  There were some circumstances where a case would involve a Police investigation, which would need to be completed before the internal investigation was dealt with.

·        A query was raised as to whether there were current arrangements for documenting grievance meetings and signing off this documentation?  Members were advised that although it was not normal practise to document these meetings it was advised that the aggrieved member of staff could arrange for a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.