Unions have submitted a two-year pay claim for 2020-21 for members working in the National Probation Service (NPS) in England and Wales, noting that, “for most employees, the pay and allowances … have risen by only 1% in real terms since 2009.”
The claim, which was submitted on 12 March by Napo, UNISON and GMB/SCOOP, sees the unions seeking:
- an increase in the value of all pay points above the retail price index of inflation on 1 April this year and 1 April 2021;
- an increase in the value of all NPS allowances above the retail price index of inflation on 1 April this year and 1 April 2021;
- automatic pay progression in line with the two-year pay modernisation award (in both years);
- deletion of pay band 1;
- removal of pay band overlaps.
The claim comes against a background of January’s report from HM Inspectorate of Prisons.
This identified a catalogue of problems in how the National Probation Service is managing the workforce, particularly in terms of “staffing shortages, unreasonable and unsustainable workloads, and questions of the level of pay for certain posts”.