The purpose of this report is to consult Employment Panel on the introduction of an annual leave trading scheme for Herefordshire Council employees. The scheme would be trialled for six months during the 2020 annual leave year and would initially allow employees to request to purchase up to 3 days’ additional leave (pro-rata for part time employees) during the trial period, subject to their line manager’s approval.

The assistant director people introduced the report and highlighted key points. The proposals would see council staff allowed to buy and potentially sell annual leave, with an initial six month trial limited to buying up to three days pro rata to assess the take up and impact. Use of additional leave would be subject to line manager approval and service requirements. If the trial were successful, the option to increase the numbers of days which could be purchased and to allow staff to sell some annual leave could be considered.

The decision on approval of the policy would be taken by the Chief Executive. The employment panel were being consulted as the policy would represent a change to staff terms and conditions.

In discussion of the report the panel noted that:

·         Staff were currently able to carry forward five days leave pro-rata with line manager permission;

·         It was important that staff took the leave they were entitled to and panel members were concerned that if the option to sell leave were to be included staff welfare should be considered and monitored;

·         Feedback would be monitored from staff, line managers and trade unions to assess how well the scheme was working;

·         Hoople already had a leave purchase scheme in place and felt that this was working well, a relatively small percentage of staff used it and there were specific windows when requests could be submitted to aid in planning;

·         Neighbouring councils had leave purchase policies in place and Herefordshire Council should have a comparable offer;

·         There was no defined notice period for leave requests but current policy stated that reasonable notice should be given and that the more notice given the more likely it was that the leave request would be approved, managers would be expected to manage peak periods of demand such as school holidays;

·         It was important that managers be open and transparent in decision making when considering requests for additional leave.

The panel requested that the report make clear income generation was not a driver for the initiative and that there would need to be balance in the system to ensure pressure was not placed on colleagues of staff taking additional leave.

The assistant director stated that a report on the trial period would be brought back to the panel in January 2021.

It was agreed that:

(a)  Employment Panel recommend the proposed annual leave trading scheme for Herefordshire Council employees to the Chief Executive.