pay pay pay

[kevin wooldridge]

Kevin, I am aware of a Council unit that has needed financial assistance in the past to stay opperational. I am also aware of a unit that removed the degree requirement for diggers to be more inclusive. Diggers suspected this was to avoid any substantial pay rise during a Council pay review as the job spec could have easily been worded to as 'degree or equivelant experience' and still been inclusive. :face-thinks:

Hei Digger. I am not doubting that some local authority archaeology units require financial assistance. I am however stating the legal situation - that a local authority (and by definition its services) cannot legally make a loss. Whether that involves some nifty accounting or whether the authority commits to paying core salaries admin and building overheads is another matter. Quite often there is routine charging made by local authority departments to each other that is purely 'internal accounting procedures' and not necessarily evidence of a lack of funding or a loss on the service. And of course sometimes local authority units are required to charge an overhead on its commercial operations to underwrite or supplement a local authorities funding element. And then there are section 106 planning agreements which can also effectively cover local authority inhouse archaeology teams but not necessarily external contractors...

I would dispute that any current field operation of a local authority undertaking makes a loss - most short-contract staff engaged by local authorities need to have the money committed to honour those contracts - I think however the 'overhead' portion of some field work funding, that pays for the infrastructure of the organisation and perhaps core salaries, may on occasion be deficient (and perhaps as Dinosaur suggests) the element of tendering that could appear to give a LA unit a cost advantage. Sadly in such cases it is normally the staff at the bottom end of the food chain that tend to suffer when things go wrong

Never heard of the example of removing a stated qualification, but can see the logic of it, if as you suggest it doesn't fit the profile of the organisation. Not quite sure how that would have an impact on a pay review, because to my knowledge there is no requirement under local government legislation for salary grade minima to be based on academic qualification. I mean you can pay a PhD qualified environmental health officer (or a similarly qualified archaeologist) the same as a refuse collector if you can get away with it.... It sounds to me as if someone in that instance invented a conspiracy theory that in practice was based on an unsubstantiated foundation ....