Agreement has been reached on the 2023 pay awards for local government services (‘Green Book’) employees and local authority Chief Executives. Both agreements cover the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. The details are set out in the below circulars. A separate employer circular can also be viewed below.
NJC Circular – pay agreement 2023
Chief Executives’ pay agreement 2023
Local Government Pay – context circular
For a third consecutive year, Unite has refused to have its details included in the NJC pay agreement circular. This is disappointing but does not prevent a formal collective agreement from being reached as the necessary Constitutional requirement for a majority on each Side of the NJC to be in favour has been met, which means the pay award can now be implemented.
We are unable to give any indication of when the pay deal for JNC (‘Red Book’) Craftworkers might be reached. Both unions (Unite and GMB) continue to reject the Employers’ full and final pay offer. We advise very strongly against imposing the pay offer ahead of a national collective agreement being reached. To do so would not only fragment the unity of the employers’ position but would also leave councils vulnerable to questions being asked by auditors about why, in the absence of a national collective agreement, expenditure had been unnecessarily incurred. Perhaps more importantly, councils would need to consider very carefully the wider legal issues, including those arising out of the cases of Kostal UK Limited v Dunkley and INEOS Infrastructure Grangemouth Limited v Jones & others.