To respond to this consistent concern, we have looked at our payline levels across the services we provide, and compared them to the wider local government sector.
The review concluded that Derbyshire County Council has historically paid at the lower third of the local government sector, across the range of roles it employs. The review further concluded that the cost of raising our payline to be at the local government sector average would be an additional £20m, if our overall structure remained the same.
Across the last two budgeting cycles (the planning cycle in the financial year 2024/25 which produced the budget for this financial year 2025/26, and the current planning cycle in financial year 2025/26 to produce the budget for the next financial year 2026/27), we have considered including the cost of the payline uplift into the budget, which would require at least the same amount of efficiency savings to fund it (£20m).
Funding options have included the reduced requirement for market supplements and agency spend which a raised payline would produce, and a review of terms and conditions of service which the council provides.
The conclusion of all the analysis has been that adjustment while retaining our current structure is not sufficient to fund a payline uplift, which means that we can only increase our payline if we change our structure. As a result, there is no provision in our budget planning for financial year 2026/27 to increase our payline. This has been a very difficult decision to take as balancing the need to ensure that services remain at full capacity to meet growing demand in our communities with a will to increase pay is not achievable without significant impact on services at this time. It is understood that this is not where we want to be for our workforce.
Looking forward, we are procuring external support for an efficiency programme, and our overall structure will change through Local Government Reorganisation from 1 April 2028, both of which offer opportunities to adjust our payline to the local government sector average, if our overall structure can be changed to make the payline uplift affordable.