Dear All,

Like others across the country, advisers in Birmingham City Council are potentially facing a reduction in our salaries as part of the Pay and Grading Review under the Single Status Agreement:
http://www.unison.org.uk/localgov/gettingequal/singlestatus.asp

I would like to gather information about the typical salary for a Welfare Rights Adviser. This information may prove useful if and when we need to appeal against a pay cut.

Current Salary Range for a Full-Time Benefits Adviser:
£20,895 – 24,708 (gross)

Proposed Salary Upper Limit:
£23,175 (LOSS OF £1533(gross))

I’d very much appreciate if you would consider posting or emailing me with the current salary range for your local authority. I'll gladly feedback later to anyone interested.

I'd also welcome any other related information or links - thanks in advance.

Garry

RELATED THREAD:
http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=112&topic_id=624&mesg_id=624&page=

Ours are as you state above.

Down here for SSDC its £14787 - £17985 currently, we're still awaiting our job evaluation.

I am not aware that this is about welfare rights jobs per se but about the particular job that you do in the council and how that is to be valued in the general regrading process. Job descriptions and the work of welfare rights advisers vary. I think that pay scales in the larger authorities tend to be higher as there are aspects of the job apart from advice. There is the issue of training, project leadership, social policy work etc. I would argue that the comparisons are with jobs within the council which also provide similar services. Local authority pay grades may suffer if it is only compared to other advice work within the council which is currently paid less. The issue then is should advice work in general in local authorities be better remunerated.

I think that the competences and skills necessary for community based advice work are undervalued when it comes to remuneration. Part of the problem is that the organisations that provide and bid for such work will necessarily have to limit salaries in order to obtain funding. The issue of welfare rights salaries will remain until such organisations have the confidence that funders will take into account that salaries need to be commensurate with the service provided and therefore be able to put in realistic bids. This will not happen as long as it is promoted and accepted that some service is better than no service at all. I would not envy anyone with regards to the practice of putting ones head above the proverbial parapet to try and make this happen.

By all means compare salaries nationally but we should also look within our own authorities e.g. legal and finance sections in order to make as strong a case as possible.

Apologies if I'm stating the bleeding obvious but other subscribers may not be aware of this issue of regrading of all posts in local authorities up to and including P06 scale. The reason for this was based on the outcome of increases in pay, which mainly affected women, for council workers who were paid less for work of a similar nature to that of other occupations. It was not intended to be a tool to down grade salaries in order to offset increases in salaries that resulted from this equal opportunity process. Altough I am not that naive to believe that this would not have come under discussion.

Good luck to everyone out there going through this process.

Shaun

Garry - you will see from our post currently advertised on Rightsnet that we pay in the range £20,235-£23,175. We've been through single status/job evaluation and the WRO post came through firmly at this grade - our authority calls it grade "M". Also we've had to firm up some of the person spec - again following job evaluation. Hope this helps (it probably doesn't!) - Matthew.

Wed 05-Sep-07 03:04 PM by bat

Thanks to those who have replied above with wither their salary figures and with the wider points about this review - its much appreciated.

I'll let you know how things develop here in Birmingham.

If anyone else is considering posting to this thread, please do...

Garry

Garry

I know its an old thread but what was the outcome?

We got an upgrade and our salary works from roughly £20 000 to £22295. Don't know how relevant ours will be to yours Pete (we're a District Council with a population of 250 000, yours though is a Metropolitan Council with presumably much bigger population).

For my many sins |I am the shop steward at Southwark's WRU. Our salaries are higher than the £20k-£23k average. London weighting accounts for about £2.5K of my salary which would be £30K otherwise. Partly this is because of better trade union representation and organsition in local government than in the voluntary sector. IMHO the VS exists to exploit people's better nature!

I would compare a experienced WRA post to a social worker or a junior town planner. Both these posts will attract a salary well above £20k-23K. It would be difficult to compare the job with a qualified lawyer who may expect from the mid-30's up (btw I realise the lawyers employed in the VS can get a lot less!).

Having said that all LA's are looking to down grade staff left right and centre and also to outsource to the VS. Getting or keeping decent standards of living does involve being organised and being ready to hold out against spending cuts etc.