Heather Wheeler – 2022 Statement on Pay Rise Guidance For Civil Servants
The statement made by Heather Wheeler, the Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office, in the House of Commons on 31 March 2022.
Today we publish this year’s civil service pay remit guidance. This document provides a framework for setting pay for civil servants throughout the civil service, including Departments, non-ministerial Departments and agencies, as well as for public sector workers in non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) and other arm’s length bodies for the 2022-23 pay remit year.
This Government want to ensure that they are attracting the best and brightest to work for the civil service, and rewarding hard working staff fairly. Civil servants benefit from a competitive employment offer including access to one of the best pension schemes available amongst other benefits. In addition to this, our ambition is for the civil service to be the most inclusive employer in the country, offering opportunities and a chance to progress in challenging roles, delivering vital public services across the country.
With economic recovery under way, this year’s pay guidance is framed by the commitment of this Government to deliver on their extensive agenda that will require reform of the capacity and capability of the civil service. We need to ensure that the civil service is equipped with the right skills and values, and that the policymakers are closer to the communities they serve. However, we must also balance pay settlements with our macroeconomic objectives and the need to invest in high quality public services. This remit guidance ensures broad parity with private sector wage settlements while providing fair pay rises for hard working staff.
This year’s guidance sets out that civil service organisations are able to make pay awards of up to 3%. They will have freedom to pay average awards up to 2%, with a further 1% to be targeted at specific priorities in their workforce and pay strategies. In addition, organisations are able to fund legal requirements of increases to the national living wage (NLW) by 6.6% to £9.50 per hour from April 2022. As the Chancellor stated, this will ensure that we are making work pay and keeps us on track to meet our target to end low pay by the end of this Parliament.
