Thread: Civil Serpants £300M bonuses

I think the problem with this is that I assume this is part of the CS wage bill anyway. When I last worked with them, half of them were awarded a bonus at the end of the year.....the most stupid idea ever thought of. Makes good news headlines in today's climate but it's a crap system which has been in for years.

Less than £25k - you're not kidding!

Try less than £16k after 5 years service. Not like I'm a school leaver either - 15 years previous Military service count's for nowt.

Originally Posted by asr1

I couldn't care less. A taxed bonus of 1k is an expenses claim, not a bonus!

No expenses claims, overtime or courses either!

Not sure I can get hugely over excited about this but already it seems the reporting is one sided - 21 years old Privates gets £16-20K, most CS I suspect are on less than £25k, but the Privates salary isn't the real figure - cheap housing, cheap schooling, free medical care etc.

Tell me about this cheap housing schooling and medical care? Housing is the average of all council house rents in UK. (see AFPRB report) Medical care is the same as civilians get and they pay the same NI for it. Cheap schooling really? Please explain?

The bonus is a dreadful system, foisted on the MOD by HM Treasury. Most MOD CS that I know (including myself) are deeply opposed to the scheme on the grounds that it is very divisive, and that it doesn’t achieve its aims. The only reason we have it is because HMT knows that bonus payments are non pensionable, and as such would rather pay out a one off lump sum, rather than life long increasing payments through actual pay rises.

The sums involved are pretty small too – the vast majority of people get the normal bonus, which is rarely more than a few hundred quid before tax. I’ve dug out the bonus amounts – they range from £350 for an admin clerk, to £1000 for a Band B2 (Col level) – this is before tax. We are not exactly being paid banker level bonuses here, and most people would rather that they used this pool of money to pay us properly, rather than this current sham of a scheme.


This issue has linked into the wider problem of CS pay – now at a junior level, CS pay is reasonably competitive for the work it involves – usually in the £14 - £19K per year range for admin staff. My old clerk has done 22 years, and is on £22,500k per year – less than a reasonably experienced private. Retention is a major problem at mid level management, and one of the reasons why the CS often screws up is because we don’t pay experienced people enough at a time when they have mortgages and families to look after, and the private sector can headhunt with ease. As a comparison, a C1 band CS is paid roughly £35k - £41K per year – their military equivalents start on £60k per year, and that is without allowances. You can see why the private sector seems so tempting to so many of us who have wives and children to support.

Bonus?

Still waiting for mine.

As Jim30 says, CS pay is a laugh, as a wearer of green blotchy clothes, one of the (very few) upsides of being in a predominantly CS workplace is comparing pay, or "accidentally" leaving payslips on your desk . One of my colleagues, a WO2, is reported on (1st RO) by a C2 CS on about £8k less than him.

This turd has been floating in the bowl for a while now. The thirty second piece on this morning's BBC Breakfast news has just poked it with a stick, that's all.
Over the last few years, the MoD Performance Pay scheme has evolved into an exercise in report writing; and even that didn't necessarily guarantee you an award as numbers were capped and spineless reporting officers failed to grow a set and put every man and his dog through on recommendation to leave the Award Groups with the onerous task of deciding the First Among Equals. It adds no value, it is non-pensionable, it is unfair and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's scrapped because of course it's worth more than half a dozen Chinooks. To round off the analogy, someone flush the bog...

Where does the £300M figure in the heading come from? Is it a cross-government figure? I can't see it anywhere in the story. Incidentally I gave a quick interview on this subject on BBC R Scotland this morning, and a separate interview on BBC R Wales on a different subject - for which I may be able to claim one of the first broadcast uses of the term "outrage bus". ;)

When I was in the CS FSA the reason I was given for PRP bonuses was that it meant annual pay rises could be shown to be within limits whilst at the same time giving above limit pay rises.

The trouble with this system is once you start it's very hard to stop or change it without giving a massive genuine pay rise.