WADING THROUGH TREACLE – NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE
First, apologies for the delay between updates. We have continued to meet the council on a weekly basis but the meetings have been dense legal discussions. There has been a recent tax decision that has complicated matters – it means that arrangements made in 2019 need to be amended. The council has sought KC advice which has been helpful.
The biggest delays have been over finding a way to achieve net parity between all claimants and data provisions. At lot of options on parity have been discussed and we hope we have a way forward.
The other major issue was updating wage data from 2018 to date and merging that with the 2019 scheme. This has taken much longer than was expected. We have now received this and it is being analysed as we speak.
In the meantime the council has announced a new funding package that will enable it to make proposals.
IS IT ENOUGH?
We don’t know yet. The biggest difference is that the council are insisting that the money covers a complete settlement until 2024. We suspect that this is not enough to cover that far ahead. But until we crunch the numbers we wont know if there is a shortfall and by how much.
There have been reports that the council is reneging on the 2017 decision. It isn’t. FAKE NEWS!
The council is very committed to finding a way to resolve the cases subject to the financing limitations. The discussions have been positive and constructive.
I expect they will now get far more intense now that the data is available.
The strike ballot remains valid. There maybe some big decisions to make soon.
WHEN WILL I GET PAID I HEAR YOU ASK
I don’t know but it won’t be October. I suspect early 2023 would be optimistic even if we reach a deal. There’s a huge amount still to discuss and a mountain of admin to sort out.
As always happy to answer questions.