- Conference
- 2025 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 1 January 2025
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that UNISON members in local government have seen sustained and repeated cuts in the real value of their pay over the last 15 years. Those covered by the NJC in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have lost more than a quarter of the value of their pay. While the rate of inflation has begun to fall, the prices of food, energy and housing continue to increase. With the price of essentials rising faster than other goods, it is the lowest paid who are affected the most by continued inflation. However, local government staff at all levels need better pay increases.
At the same time, the councils and schools that employ most UNISON members in local government are experiencing a funding crisis.
UNISON’s research has uncovered UK-wide cumulative funding gaps of £4.3bn for 2025/26 and £8.5bn by 2026/27, leaving employers with extremely difficult decisions to make. More councils are expected to issue Section 114 notices, leaving jobs and services at risk. The Labour Government’s announcement of new funding for local government in the October 2024 Budget recognised the main financial challenges that councils are facing, but far more investment is needed – alongside a fairer system for distributing it. It is vital that the 2025 Comprehensive Spending Review delivers this, along with a more stable system providing multi-year settlements.
Conference believes that our members’ employers must make decent pay offers, and the government must step up and fund them. UNISON’s campaigns on local government funding and local government pay are intrinsically linked, and in order for members to win sustained, real terms increases in pay, Central Government investment in local government needs to be at a higher level, with longer-term funding settlements.
This Local Government Conference calls upon the National Local Government Service Group Executive to begin an urgent and high-profile bespoke campaign to address the funding mechanism for NJC pay.
Every year that the NJC trade unions submit a pay claim for NJC staff, one of the lowly bullet points of the claim is the now common ‘strap line’ of calling for pay to be funded from Central Government, as pay is in many other large areas of the public sector. This ‘strap line’ has little or no impact year on year and is never responded to in the reply from the employers to any pay claim.
All local authorities are under significant financial pressures to balance their books and produce year on year balanced budgets by law, again not something that all other public sector services have to do.
The biggest cost pressure by far to local authorities is that of pay, especially unfunded pay awards that are not budgeted for. This leads into the spiral of the need to offer decent pay to address the recruitment and retention crisis in local government but which then poses the threat of redundancies to fund the pay increase.
This does not encourage UNISON members to participate in ballots for industrial action to improve their pay, as so many are fearful of losing their jobs.
Local government pay is negotiated nationally and should be funded nationally too.
In 2024/25, for example local government workers were offered £1290 as a cost of living pay award. Equivalent to 67p per hour this is nowhere near a proportionate offer to recompense for the cost of living crisis.
Yet even this paltry offer (and future offers) is projected to lead to further councils issuing section 114 notices, as it pushes them over the financial cliff to fund pay increase from within existing budgets.
Local government workers suffer some of the lowest pay in the public sector and there is a recruitment and retention crisis with vital roles that support society not being filled, leaving the public at significant risk. This problem cannot be left to local authorities to solve on their own, after 14 years of austerity.
Conference calls upon the Local Government Service Group Executive to work with NJC Committee, Labour Link, other NJC trade unions, LGA, Chief Executives, Leaders of Councils and not least of all the current Labour UK Government to:
1) Fund our NJC pay centrally, as it is in other parts of the public sector;
2) And for devolved nations like Cymru Wales, to receive their appropriate share of central funding via established funding consequentials.
Conference also calls on the Local Government Service Group Executive to:
1) Continue to build a strong, vocal, active and wide-ranging campaign on local government funding, working with Labour Link, the NEC and the devolved nations/administrations to push for far better funding – and longer-term funding – for local government from all four UK Governments;
2) Link this campaign to the union’s wider calls for a fair taxation system that can properly fund public services;
3) Work with UNISON’s devolved nations/administrations to develop a strategy to put pressure on the Local Government Association, Welsh Local Government Association, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Northern Ireland Local Government Association, to seek to secure their support for joint campaigning on local government funding;
4) Ensure that pay is a central part of our funding campaign, developing campaign approaches and resources which explain our campaign to politicians, the media and the public and assist in gaining their support;
5) Ensure that the sector committees within the Service Group are involved in the development of the funding campaign, so that our messaging on pay and conditions reflect the views and priorities of members.
NJC Local Government Committee (Motion 16)
Cymru/Wales Region (Motion 17)
