- Conference
- 2022 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 14 February 2022
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that research by UNISON recently revealed that councils in England and Wales are facing a combined funding shortfall of just under £5bn for the financial years 2022/23 and 2023/24. The funding for councils subsequently announced in the Westminster government’s 2021 spending review fell woefully short of what was needed to fill that funding gap. This comes on the back of years of under-funding of local government, with local authorities losing billions of pounds in funding since 2010.
In the meantime, UNISON members in local government have seen the value of their own pay plummet as local government pay has stagnated. Years of pay freezes and sub-inflation pay increases have meant that since 2010, members covered by the NJC have lost an average of around 25% of the value of their pay. Local government pay at the bottom end remains too close to the government’s National Living Wage.
Conference believes that the funding situation for local government and the realities of local government pay are unsustainable. A new approach is needed, with a fairer and more substantial funding system for local government that enables employers to pay their staff decent wages.
Conference notes that during the 2020 NJC pay campaign, the Executive of the Local Government Association (LGA) agreed to approach the government for more funding for local government pay, but declined to make that approach jointly with the trade unions. During the 2021 pay campaign, the LGA Executive declined to lobby the government for more funding for local government pay, making clear they would focus their lobbying on funding for services, but not pay.
Conference recognises the extremely difficult state of local government finance. But conference believes that ensuring fair pay for local government staff is essential if local government services are to be defended. If local authorities want to recruit and retain staff and provide high quality services, they must do more to secure better funding specifically for pay. There can be no trade-off between protecting jobs and ensuring fair pay.
Conference calls on the Local Government Service Group Executive to:
1)Continue to campaign for a new, fairer and larger funding settlement for local government from central government;
2)Support the devolved nations in their campaigns to ensure that funding settlements for local government reflect the full amount available from funding from Westminster;
3)Work with sector committees and devolved nations to ensure that pay is a key plank of UNISON’s local government funding campaigns, so that politicians, the public and the media understand the link between central government funding, local government pay and quality local services;
4)Work with Labour Link and the NJC Committee on a strategy for joint work with Labour politicians in the LGA, to influence the LGA’s decisions regarding lobbying government for funding for pay;
5)Produce campaigning and bargaining resources for branches to use in order to lobby local politicians in support of this work.