Contact: Nick Weaver, (01962 847568) email [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 Changes to employer powers for redundancy and efficiency retirements have meant that Hampshire County Council needed to agree a new policy.

1 Recommendation

That the Panel note the Hampshire County Council position.

2 Background

2.1 Hampshire County Council needs to have an early retirement policy for its employees. The old policy used some powers which the Government considers to be age discriminatory. The Government therefore changed the powers available to local authorities, to enable a new policy to be agreed.

3 Old policy

3.1 The old Hampshire County Council policy:

· used actual weekly pay in redundancy calculations

· allowed departments to award compensatory added years (CAY)

· did not use the option to pay an additional lump sum of up to 66 weeks pay inclusive of any redundancy payment.

4 New Government powers

4.1 The new powers:

· removed the ability to award CAY (as it was considered age discriminatory)

· increased the limit on the additional lump sum to 104 weeks pay inclusive of any redundancy payment

· allowed LGPS members to opt to use their additional lump sum (over the amount of the statutory redundancy payment) to buy additional pensionable service.

5 New policy

5.1 The new policy, agreed at Employment in Hampshire County Council, on 29 March:

· continues to use actual weekly pay in redundancy calculations

· uses the option to pay an additional lump sum, using a multiple of one times the redundancy payment

· allows LGPS members to choose to use some of their compensation lump sum to augment LGPS service

· allows payments for efficiency terminations to be awarded by departments up to the cost of a redundancy termination, subject to the approval of the Director of Human Resources, County Treasurer and service chief officer - and for HM employees and chief officers the approval of the Leader is also required.

Section 100 D - :Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes:

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

None.