Introduction
Determining remuneration levels for all 5.7 million public sector jobs 1 is a complex, centralised process. Pay review boards – with ministerial approval – determine salaries for millions of public sector employees across the country. Limiting Whitehall’s responsibilities for setting pay could bring
potential advantages.
Determining pay on a regional level could help to reduce the burden on taxpayers who are facing a cost of living crisis and ameliorate some of the crowding out effects in the private sector. Inflated public sector pay in less well-off regions of the UK makes recruitment more expensive and challenging for private sector employers. In better-off areas, there could be less use of expensive agency staff if pay was more regionalised, since public sector employers would no longer have to offer a rate of pay which doesn’t reflect the cost of living in the area.
This research will explore savings that could be made by curtailing existing national pay bargaining, and will complement our ongoing research on government office space.