Senior Civil Service, Senior Military and Judiciary: Pay Awards

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Written Statements

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)]

I am today announcing the Government’s decision on pay for the senior civil service (SCS), senior military and the judiciary.

The Government received the senior salary review body’s (SSRB) report on 2020 pay for the senior civil service, senior military and the judiciary on 24 June 2020. This will be presented to Parliament and published on gov.uk.

The Government value the independent expertise and insight of the senior salaries review body (SSRB) and take on board the valuable advice and principles set out in response to the Government’s recommendations outlined in the report.

Senior civil service recommendations and response for 2020-21

The SSRB recommended a 2% pay award for the SCS allocated in the following priority order:

To mitigate anomalies arising from lack of pay progression and to alleviate other pay anomalies.

To increase the pay band minima.

To provide increase to those not benefiting from increase to the minima or those benefiting by less than 1%.

The SSRB also recommended incremental steps to reduce the maxima and commented on priority work to be undertaken for the 2021-22 pay award.

The Government accept the SSRB’s recommendations in full, but will continue to delay work on reducing the maxima until the capability based pay progression system is in place.

Judiciary recommendations and response for 2020-21

The recommendations made by the SSRB for the judiciary are:

A pay award of 2% for all judicial office holders within the remit group for 2020-21, applied equally to all salary groups.

Upper tribunal judges (including the surveyor members of the Lands Chamber) and

Senior masters and registrars to be moved to a new salary group between their existing salary group of 6.1 and the higher group 5.

The introduction of leadership allowances for circuit judges who take on the currently unrewarded roles of resident judges, designated family judges and designated civil judges.

The Government accept the SSRB’s recommendations in full and note that these recommendations are predicated on the implementation of reform of judicial pensions, to address ongoing recruitment and retention problems.

Senior military recommendations and response for 2020-21

The Government accept the SSRB’s headline pay award recommendation for senior military officers of 2-star rank and above. A 2% consolidated pay award will be implemented in September salaries and backdated to 1 April 2020.

The Government accept the SSRB’s recommendations on senior military salaries to maintain the 10% increase to base pay on promotion from 1-star rank and to not change the current pay differentials for senior medical and dental officers.

The attachment can be viewed online at: http://www. parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2020-07-21/HCWS411/.

[HCWS411]