Disproportionate burden assessment for our pay scales

Scope

This information is part of an annual requirement under the Localism Act to publish an Officer Pay Policy. The Council also needs to publish its pay scales in full to make sure that people can see the detail of how much is paid to employees, including information about grades, salary scale points and pay by hour/month/year.

It is also an important element of the Council's commitment to openness and transparency by making information available 24/7 to a wide audience.

Benefits of creating an accessible version

The benefits of creating an HTML version of this PDF would be:

• a fully accessible version for all users to access
• an easily searchable and indexable version 

Burden placed on the organisation

We’ve estimated that it would take around 5 days of a content designer’s time to create a HTML version of this PDF. The pay scales cover all posts and every member of staff. The full information is, by its nature, very detailed - 55 separate spinal column points for pay, with each one split by hourly, monthly and annual amounts plus 20 'Colchester managed grades' (CMG).

The document needs to be updated regularly, for example as a result of a pay review or the implementation of the annual uplift in the Living Wage. We can, and have, made the apprentice pay aspect into HTML as it is less detailed.

Contributing factors

Other factors relevant to this decision are:

• The pay scales cover all posts and every member of staff in a large organisation.
• Each job applicant can see the specific pay information for the available post, as part of the online Job Profile.
• We have streamlined the information where possible, and used a table and a graphic to make the layout easier to read for people who do not have a disability which needs an accessible format.
• There was a need to publish the document quickly to meet operational needs, as well as the requirement to have up-to-date information on the website.
• The pay scales needed to be changed and re-published following the Living Wage Foundation's annual announcement of the new hourly rate which Living Wage employers, including Colchester City Council, must now pay. They also need to be updated to reflect any locally-agreed annual pay awards or relevant changes.
• The current rates need to be shown on the website for relevant vacancies, in the weekly email for people who signed up to receive job alerts, to inform existing staff and to meet payroll deadlines, and to support the Council's decision-making process as the Officer Pay Policy is considered by the full Council each year. We therefore took the decision to publish the PDF to meet these immediate/operational needs. 
• We have never received a request for an accessible version of the document and will continue to assist with accessible versions on request.

Assessment

After taking into consideration the need to publish this document quickly to meet operational needs, the importance of having up-to-date information on the website and the complexity of this document which would make converting it into HTML a long and difficult process, we have decided to publish this document as a PDF. This represents a disproportionate burden on the organisation.

View our pay scales(PDF,247KB)

If you need any of the information from the PDF provided in another format, contact HR.ServiceCentre@colchester.gov.uk.