Transcript

Good afternoon and welcome to the General Purposes Committee on Monday the 3rd of June 2024. I'd also like to welcome members of the public joining us this evening on or via the live recording. Fire alarm. In the event of the fire alarm sounding please make your way across the courtyard and over to the roundabout on the Way Hill Road without being knocked over. Please ensure that your mobile phones are on mute or switched off and a reminder that only members of the public who have registered to speak at this meeting may address the meeting. I don't think we have any. Are there any apologies? I have apologies from Councillors Peay North and Yorden, Mr Chairman. Thank you. Are there any apologies from Councillors? Sorry, did you say Councillor Phil North? Yes, thank you. There is no public participation. Are there any declarations of interest? No. Are there any urgent items? There are none, Mr Chairman. Thank you very much. Agenda item 5, minutes of the previous meeting to approve the minutes of the meeting held on the 8th of January 2024. Do I have a proposer? Thank you. Is there a seconder? Thank you kindly for that. All those in favour? Anyone against? Any abstentions? Thank you very much for that. Sorry, Mr Chairman. I think there was a typo in the meeting. In the meeting started at 5.30 but apparently ended at 5.2. Yes, that's very impressive. Thank you. That's fine, I'll correct those. That will be corrected. Thank you very much for bringing your attention to that. Agenda item 6, HR policy and procedure revisions. I'll hand over now to Alex Rowland. Thank you, Chairman. So today we're looking at the new family and parent policy we found on page 11 of your agenda. And it looks to combine and replace our current paternity adoption, paternity policy and procedure and our shared parental leave policy. It brings our parental policies into a single more modern 16th policy that best reflects the ways in which people choose to become parents. The new policy aims to have an inclusive approach and sets out a clear spell for different options that are available in terms of parental leave and pay for people. We received some really positive feedback on the proposed job policy from our internal equality diversity and inclusion network. And also our union consultation group. They liked its ease of understanding and inclusive tone and language and signpost due to support that's included at the end. Our contracts for employment set out how different elements of parental leave are dealt with. So maternity and adoption leave and pay follow the national agreement for local government as set out in the green book. And the new policy doesn't propose any changes to these arrangements. But by contrast, our paternity or supporting parental leave and our shared parental leave are local positions of service. And the paper recommends some small changes to these arrangements. So in terms of paternity and supporting parental leave, there's actually been a small change from a legislative perspective where people can now, a supporting partner can take their two weeks leave as two separate weeks at any time within the first year of the birth or adoption or placement. So in terms of small enhancements, so with the canopy and supporting parental leave, the enhancements look to change the parental leave pay from one week's full pay and one week's statutory pay to two weeks full pay. Enabling supporting parents to have the two weeks to spend time with their child during the first year. And then in terms of the shared parental leave, the enhancement here looks to provide shared parental leave pay, which would mirror the same pay that someone would get if they were on maternity or adoption leave for the same weeks. So if someone would go for weeks 12, 14, they'd get the same pay as someone who would be on maternity or adoption leave for those same weeks. What this means in practice is that the mother or the primary adopter could return to work early, they could give up some of their maternity or adoption leave and pay, and the second parent could then take that as shared parental leave and they could have those remaining weeks as leave and pay in the same way as if they were on maternity or adoption leave. There is some secret rights for a more inclusive approach to parental leave and pay. In terms of resource implications, small additional costs will be contained within existing budgets. So on average at the moment we have about four or five people that probably take paternity or supported parental leave each year. And in terms of shared parental leave, we've only had one person who's actually taken that since 2015, many of them have introduced. Obviously for those employees that are interested in sharing their parental leave, if change can make a difference, it adds more choice in how people could look after their child or children in that first year. It's more what we're keeping with the modern society and how people are choosing to come parents and live their lives. It's also important for having employment policies that are attractive to come to the future employees and for improving obtaining as a parent. So several persons can see our last to consider the options which are on page nine of the agenda. So one is to adopt the living policy with the recommended appointment as it's included in panic one. The second option is to adopt the policy but without the enhancements. So to continue with the statutory pay arrangement, we currently have and really refuse to adopt it in a different format. I'm very happy to take any questions. Councillor Alan Dowden. Yes, thank you Chairman. Can I ask the officer a few questions actually? The first is I recognise obviously many private organisations offer more generous arrangements but I'm only concerned about local authorities because that's what we have to consider. And you say in the report that a number of local authorities have enhanced their provision to not run the cases but do you say which ones in Hampshire? Sorry I haven't got that information right with me here. Sorry I haven't got that information with me here but there were two or three of the local authorities that have enhanced provision for parental leave whether that was in terms of giving two weeks leave paid leave for paternity and supportive parental leave or in terms of parental leave as well. I'm surprised it isn't in the report in Hampshire for example. They're not going all over the country but some comparisons have been done who have carried it out and who haven't. So in a way I'd like to know the answer to that question. And the other question is it also in the report that says in the last four years we've had 13 people take paternity and support in parental leave. Will this encourage more? Because nobody likes to lose anyone if they can't afford to lose anyone. I don't think it will encourage people to take in terms of the parental leave. So most people would currently take at least one week of parental leave. It might encourage people to take two weeks. So some people take the two weeks already and have one week paid and one week as tax relief. But some people choose not to because they can't take the reduction in pay and so therefore they only take the one week. They might take the manual leave or something instead. And the third question is, because this is the most important one, if people are off then will it be carried out? Who's going to carry out that work or not at all? So in terms of the maternity leave, as is often the case, we often would recruit hosts to cover a year's worth of leave or up to a year's worth of leave. In terms of parental or shared parental leave of two weeks, it's very similar to when people would take a two week holiday. So those things would be planned for imagine an existing resource that you wouldn't bring in additional people to cover parental leave or shared parental leave for the two week window. So basically, older officers then, because they're not in that situation, will be carrying more with younger officers, is that correct? Not necessarily. I think it would depend on whichever team, someone had a child, that team would take on board the responsibility of providing support for someone taking up to two weeks parental leave. Maternity leave for the parent that is taking the full period of time is ordinarily covered with an additional resource coming in for a longer period of time, as is when anybody of any age takes a holiday or is away from work for a period of time. That's often times planned and arranged across service and the benefit often of parental leave is you have a nice at least six months notice ordinarily when that period of time is coming, so you can plan for that in a way that you can be planned for managing annual leave in terms of resources and anything of any age group. Do you understand what I'm asking you? Ignorantly. It's not that I'm against it, but the problem is the result. Councillor Adams-Keene. So what I was really pleased to see was the recognition that if adoption breaks down, that there is still an allowance for people to take some time off still because that can be an obviously stressful and upsetting experience for people. The thing that I think is interesting, and it shouldn't necessarily be in here, but increasingly you will find that people who are being considered for adoption are being asked to consider what's called daily permanence. So that's where the child is placed with a family quite often straight from birth or from hospital. The thinking being that whilst the process of obtaining a placement order is undertaken, the adoptive parents act as foster parents until such time as the adoption starts. And so the child is not placed with you sometime for some months, particularly if the legal work is extended. It's not a financial burden because you're paid as a foster parent in that period. But it's clearly disruptive for us in terms of then working out exactly how long someone's going to be on adoption leave. And it's also when you're having a child naturally, you've got plenty of notice. When you're adopting a child, you can have as little as 10 days notice, which was our experience. And so it's a very different situation, probably on the move of Alan's point, that all of that can be quite disruptive. It is really positive to see how positive we are about it, I have to say. I think it's great what we're doing. But I think there's a lot of that to be on our radar in terms of how we might deal with those situations because it is an increasingly common way of dealing with things. In so doing, when you place a child through early permanence, you are avoiding the different moves between foster homes or for different situations, which can be disruptive for a child later on. So I'm not sure there's a policy that we have to cover it necessarily, but just to see whether we've had the experience of it or whether it's something we've thought about. So we have recently had someone who's taken adoption leave actually, so it will be interesting perhaps to have some conversations with them about how they've found the policy. But there is something on page two around that, sort of fostering to adopt a head off, moving on to adoption. But it might be that we need to be a little bit clearer around that because it might be that we haven't covered all of the situations and that might happen. Just building on that, I think part of what we do with student management anyway is we engage with staff who are at the beginning of that journey, so we would definitely have an awareness of direction of travel that an employee was going on. And we would definitely look to support them on a one-to-one basis and understand how that journey was progressing and start to have some of those conversations at an early point. We would feel that it needs to be reflected based on feedback and experience. We'd be happy to explore that. I'm not sure that it needs to necessarily, as long as we're aware of it and aware of how quickly it can all occur. I think I know what you're talking about in terms of who's adopted recently and it would be really interesting to get that experience actually because they've been through something quite similar I think, to understand that that worked for them. Thank you very much for that. Are there any further questions? Councillor Sealy down. Thanks, Chairman. This is purely out of interest for myself, so please indulge me. When it's the mother who's taken maternity leave and the baby's newborn, how many of those return to full-time work that we have experienced over these years? The most of them actually come back and work on part-time work as a preference, which I can imagine many would quite understandably. And how many actually take leave but then put in and say no, I don't want to stay at home for a long time? So this is for the memory, but I would say that for my memory I can't think of anybody actually that has left the following amount of leave. So it really has to be in terms of how many people do choose to return part-time. And is that something that we as statutory you must consider? Is that correct in that they make that request? Not spatially required, but we would always look to see if we can consider that. And people could put in a flexible working request, so we have to follow the guidelines and legislation around flexible working requests, allowing certain things that you can reject a flexible working request on through. We'd have to consider it very carefully in terms of the reasons for rejecting it, and it would have to fall within the bounds of what we can reject it on in terms of legislation. I'm sure that for many months it's not necessarily a choice to continue working full-time. A few years ago it was easier than it is now. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any further questions? No? Okay. I propose the recommendation on page six. Do I have a seconder? Thank you, Councillor Flood. Is there any debate? Councillor Flood. Not debate as such, but it's very pleasing that we do have such a comprehensive policy in this area, and it's in line with current and best practice so far. Thank you. Thank you, I agree. Any further debate? No? Okay. Can I ask, because I would be interested to know, and you can find that information, I'd like to know what other local authorities are doing in the region. Okay. Can I leave that with you? Thank you kindly. Right. All those in favour? Anyone against? Any abstentions? No. Thank you very much. Agenda item seven. Appointment of general purposes subcommittee. Following annual council, it is necessary to establish subcommittees of the general purposes committee to deal with a range of duties as set out in the council's constitution. I propose the recommendation on page 27. Do I have a seconder? Thank you, Councillor Adams-King. Is there any debate? No? Okay. All those in favour? Anyone against? No abstentions? Thank you very much. That is the end of the meeting. And I wish you all a safe journey home.