NHS Scotland Agenda for Change staff - working week reduction: Fairer Scotland Duty Assessment

Evidence

Consultation

Review of AfC negotiations commenced on 31 January 2023 and Staff Side consulted with members regarding the proposed Heads of Agreement. The second Negotiations meeting occurred on 9 February 2023 where Staff Side provided feedback from their consultation with members.

Members expressed a desire to focus on work life balance, with a common view that the commitment to reducing the working week to 36 hours occur as soon as possible. It was recognised this will be required to be incremental over an agreed period.

Thereafter, the final Heads of Agreement was approved on 16 February 2023. The Heads of Agreement and the AfC pay offer was unanimously accepted on 21 March 2023.

Analysts have been consulted throughout this process regarding modelling for the Reduction in the Working Week working group and the data gathering exercise for the Fairer Scotland Duty Assessment.

In addition, the outputs of this working group were agreed on a tripartite basis. All suggestions from the working group were subject to review challenge by both STAC Secretariat and full STAC. Both of which include consideration of the demographic characteristics such as race, gender and disability are explicitly linked to socio-economic disadvantage within the workforce.

Data

Primarily evidence has been gathered from existing national data sets and published reports:

• The Scottish Household Survey 2022: Key Findings
• Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland 2019-22
• Tackling Child Poverty Priority Families Overview (2023)
• Working Poverty Analysis 2019
• NHSScotland Workforce Data

Key findings from evidence gathering on socio-economic data:

• Single parent and single adult households were the most likely to report that they were not managing well financially (26 and 15% respectively), compared to the Scotland average of 9%^[1].
• Relative poverty rates are highest for:
  • Younger households (household heads aged 16-24)
  • Single mothers and single men
  • LGB+ adults compared to straight / heterosexual adults
  • Single, divorced and separated, and lowest for married adults
  • Ethnic minorities
  • Muslims
  • Where a household member is disabled^[2]
• ‘In-work’ or working poverty describes households who live in relative poverty even though someone in the household is in paid work. Working poverty is of particular concern in tackling poverty given that the majority of the working-age population in relative poverty now live in working households (59% in 2014-17 compared to 48% in 1996-99).
• Low pay and the number of hours worked by households (‘work intensity’) have been identified by research as key factors that influence working poverty.
• Households in working poverty are more likely to have young children than the general population. Parents’ ability to increase working hours is often dependent on the availability of flexible working and affordable childcare.^[3]
• Evidence highlights six priority households identified at highest risk of child poverty: ln one parent families, minority ethnic families, families with a disabled adult or child, families with a younger mother (under 25), families with a child under one, and larger families (three or more children).^[4]
• Highlands and Islands Enterprise found that, typically, the minimum cost of living in remote rural Scotland are typically 10-40 per cent higher than elsewhere in the UK. The additional costs are mainly from shopping, broadband, delivery costs, transport, childcare, and fuel costs.^[5]
• The NHS AfC workforce (30 June 2024) consists of:
  • 42% are support staff
  • median age of the workforce is 48 years of age
  • 34.1% of staff are nearing or have achieved retirement age i.e. 55+ years of age
  • under 25s are the age group with the smallest proportion of staff
  • only 1.4% of staff have indicated they consider themselves to have a disability
  • predominately female workforce with 78.8% female employees and 21.2% male employees (headcount)
  • AfC staff benefit from the National Living Wage.
• In the financial year ending 2023 Median household disposable income in the UK was £34,500, a decrease of 2.5% from FYE 2022.^[6]
• The pay points for NHS AfC support staff in bands 1 - 4 ranged from £24,518 to £31,670 for the pay period 2024/2025.^[7]
• The pay points for NHS AfC qualified staff in bands 5 - 9 ranged from £31,892 to £112,831.^[8]

Reduction in the Working Week Policy

As 42% of AfC staff fall below the median household disposable income in the UK, reducing the number of hours to 36 hours per week will assist in addressing low pay, tackling poverty, and child poverty as the hourly rate for staff will increase.

A parent or carers ability to increase working hours is often dependent on the availability of flexible working and affordable childcare and low pay and the number of hours worked by households been identified as key factors that influence working poverty.