Committee details

1              Personnel Committee

Composition:            Seven Councillors in political balance. Chair appointed by Council annually. Where the Committee meets to appoint a Chief Executive, Director or Deputy Director (also known as JNC Chief Officers) or appoints a Sub-Committee/Panel to deal with disciplinary, grievance, capability matters or appeals, the Committee will include at least one Cabinet member.

All members of the Committee and Councillors attending as substitutes must:

(a)        have undertaken mandatory training on the relevant law and procedures that relate to the Committee’s work; and must

(b)       undertake further mandatory training, on an ad hoc basis, when there are changes to procedure or relevant legislation that are deemed to be significant by the relevant Director.

Terms of Reference:

To deal with the appointment of JNC Chief Officer level posts and to determine the terms and conditions on which staff are employed. In particular the Committee will:

1.1          Develop and review Council policy in respect of human resources, staff and conditions of service including:

(a)  Recruitment and retention;

(b)  The “Raising Concerns” Whistleblowing, disciplinary, capability, grievance and harassment;

(c)   Redeployment, redundancy, early retirement and severance;

(d)  Sickness absence;

(e)  Employee and organisational development, apprentices; and

(f)    Health and Safety and welfare.

1.2          The Personnel Committee will also:

(a)  Consider and recommend to Council the Annual Pay Policy Statement.

(b)  Appoint a Panel (usually of three) from the Committee including at least one Cabinet member to consider appeals against dismissal, grading and grievances by JNC Chief Officers (except that there shall be no appeal against dismissal for the Chief Executive, Chief Finance Officer or Monitoring Officer).

(c)   Appoint to and make decisions in respect of redundancy and redeployment for JNC Chief Officer posts.

(d)  Consider and deal with requests for voluntary severance, including early retirement and/or voluntary redundancy.

(e)  Appoint a Panel of (usually of three) from the Committee, including at least one Cabinet member, assisted by one independent adviser, to act as an Appraisal Panel (as required by the JNC Conditions of Service for Chief Executives and Chief Officers) for the Chief Executive;

(f)    Appoint, when required, an “Investigation and Disciplinary Committee” referred to in the JNC Conditions of Service for Chief Executives and Chief Officers; with power to appoint an independent investigator and independent advisors, if required; and to suspend the Chief Executive, if considered appropriate. Where the Investigation and Disciplinary Committee makes a recommendation to Full Council to dismiss a Chief Executive, Chief Finance Officer or Monitoring Officer then the Independent Persons Panel must meet and consider the matter and prepare a report for Council before any decision to dismiss is considered by Full Council;

(g)  Consider and respond to consultation requests in respect of national pay negotiations and determine pay awards;

(h)  Determine any other personnel or HR matter that is not delegated to officers.

1.3          The seven members of the Personnel Committee shall represent Lancaster City Council on the Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) as the employer representatives.