Members at Chalcot school with their back pay slips
UNISON helped 200 or more school support staff across Camden reclaim backdated pay increases for pay scale increments that were not paid or delayed. In some cases individual staff received thousands of pounds back pay plus pay increases.
UNISON first discovered three schools where staff had not reached the top of their grade even though they had worked in the same post for over five years. Some schools claimed it was because staff hadn’t met ‘appraisal’ targets even though none were set.
UNISON raised this issue in September 2012 with the Authority, pointing to the legislation and guidance schools received seperately from the DFE at various points over the last 20 years. The Authority agreed to consider what we said. As a result of the newsletter we distributed in September 2012 more school staff reported that they hadn’t had an increase also.
In May 2013 the Authority wrote to UNISON saying:
Over the last few months, we have sought legal advice and checked every single contract of the staff above. The contractual status does show that they should be progressing incrementally each year until the top of their grade.
The Authority agreed to contact each school and discuss how they would put this right. We were then told that all arrears should be paid by the end of the summer holidays.
The average backdated payout per worker was around an estimated £800, with the total back pay an estimated £160,000, with the additional incremental increases being worth up to nearly £2000 per year in future.
We would like to thank all staff for their patience and hope that you have now received all the back pay owed to you. If you think you were owed money but haven’t received it yet please contact hugo.pierre@camden.gov.uk