Trade Unions       

FOI REFERENCE: 24407   FOI DATE: 7^th October 2024     

1. The details of any office accommodation your organisation provides to staff to carry out trade union business. Please include details of:

space measured in square feet

how much of this space is contained within entirely separate buildings (i.e. occupied solely by staff carrying out trade union business)

whether a professional valuation of the market rental value of the space has been sought either in-house or externally, and if so, what the valuation of the space was

any charges the council levy for office space given to trade unions.

Union Staff use various spaces to conduct Trade Union activities – including their own permanent work/office spaces and our FTO works from home predominantly. The square feet space would vary depending on where they choose to work on any given day.   Market rental space value and council levy is not applicable.

2. Do you deduct trade union subscriptions for any of your employees via payroll (sometimes known as the “check off” system)? If so, do you charge a fee to the trade unions concerned for providing this service? 

Yes, we do deduct some union deductions for employees directly through the payroll, but we do not charge an admin fee for this.  We pay the whole deduction over to the Unions for the employee’s membership. 3. With regard to trade union facility time, please provide the total cost of facility time from your pay bill for the financial year 2023/24 and the budget for the current financial year. Please also advise the current number of employees that you fund to be union officials, measured as full time equivalents? (For guidance on definitions please refer to the Government’s Transparency Code for local government:

Number of employees who were relevant union officials during the relevant period = 27

Full time equivalent employee number = 20.34 WTE

Percentage of time spent on facility time

Percentage of time (%)	Number of employees
0%	0
1-50%	26
51% – 99%	0
100%	1

Percentage of pay bill spent on facility time

Total cost of facility time £63,425.38

Total pay bill £255,853,338.07

Percentage of the total pay bill spent on facility time, calculated as: 0.02%

 4.  Please advise any estimates for other costs met for those staff on trade union facility time apart from salaries – including travel expenses, office supplies, telephone expenses and energy bills.

Not applicable – not recorded as a separate cost