All Members
11th March 2015
Monthly Pay
Members will be aware the issue of harmonising pay frequencies has
been under discussion for over a year. The SFRS wish to introduce new
pay frequency arrangements for all employees in order to achieve
necessary savings from their declining budget.
It became apparent during the talks that maintaining everyone on their
existing pay arrangements was unsustainable. If the SFRS did not
harmonise existing pay frequencies, inherited from the eight legacy
Services (around 20), they would then have to look elsewhere to find
savings, due to the year on year reduction in their budget.
The SFRS believe that the greatest savings could be achieved if that single
pay frequency was monthly to be paid on the second last day of every
month in arrears.Initially, no formal agreement could be reached on the introduction ofmonthly pay, as the FBU believed the proposal on offer fell short of what was acceptable to our members.
Original Offer
A Salary Advanced Payment of 5 times your net pay (averaged over a 12
week period) with no flexibility and a repayment period of a maximum
18 months.
Revised Offer
The FBU continued talks with both the Service and the Scottish
Government which resulted in a revised offer on flexibility on how much
of a Salary Advance Payment could be taken (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 times your
net pay) and the repayment period extended to 24 months for all
members and 36 months for those who believed this would result in
financial hardship.
The FBU called an Emergency Regional Committee Meeting on Tuesday
10th March to discuss the revised offer made by the SFRS.
Delegates from all districts across Scotland attended the meeting and
after much debate it was felt that the revised offer fell short of what
could be acceptable to our members and therefore could not be
accepted by the FBU.
The Regional Committee strongly believed the offer of a repayment
period of 36 months should be extended to all employees with a 48
month period offered to any employee who ticks a box stating the level
of repayment would cause them financial hardship.
Further detailed negotiations then took place and we are pleased to
inform members that our position was accepted by the Service and on
that basis the Scottish Regional Committee found the revised offer
acceptable.
Accepted Offer
The accepted offer means that if a member decides to take the Salary
Advanced Payment then this can now be 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 times your net
weekly pay.
You decide how much you need to take.
The repayment period for the SAP is now a maximum of 36 months for
all employees and 48 months for those who believe they will suffer
financial hardship.
The SAP payment will not be subject to any Income Tax, National
Insurance or Pensionable Deductions and this has been validated with
HMRC. The Service will now relay this information to its employees to make sure those in the former Strathclyde who have already returned SAP forms can take advantage of the new offer.
The FBU believe that the final negotiated settlement is a significant
improvement on the original offer, which has been achieved by our
determination to get our members the best possible outcome and we
will continue to do this as issues arise in the future.
Members will be kept updated of developments and officials will be
available to discuss any issues you may have.
Scottish Regional Committee