01 April 2025 – Minutes (draft)

THAME TOWN COUNCIL

Minutes of the Personnel Committee Meeting held on 1 April 2025 at 3:00pm in the Meeting Room, Thame Town Hall.

Present:

Town Mayor, Cllr A Gilbert
Deputy Mayor, Cllr D Dawson
Chairman of Corporate Governance, Cllr M Dyer
Chairman of Environment & Assets Committee, Cllr A Dite
Chairman of Planning Committee, M Baines

Officer:

M Sturdy (Town Clerk)

 

1) Apologies for Absence

Apologies were received from Cllr Cowell (personal).

RESOLVED:

  1. To accept the apologies and reason given from Cllr Cowell (personal).

 

2) Declarations of Interest and Dispensations

There were no declarations of interest or dispensations.

 

3) Public Participation and Public Questions

There were no applications to address the Committee.
There were no questions put to the Committee.

 

4) Minutes

The Minutes of the Committee Meeting held on 13 January 2025 were confirmed as a correct record and were signed by the Chairman.

 

5) Exclusion of the Public

RESOLVED: That under Section 1, Paragraph 2 of The Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following items of business because publicity would be prejudicial to the public interest by reason of the confidential nature of the business to be transacted.

 

6) Finance Team Resources

The committee received an update on the review of accountant responsibilities and the effects on the finance team. The committee thanked the RFO and the Cllr supporting this work. The committee recommend to full council the commissioning a systems analyst to work with the RFO, supporting Cllr and Committee Services & Processes Officer to establish improvements available with our finance system. The committee expect any costs to be offset by savings already identified by the RFO. The committee expect this project to be the start of a continuous improvement cycle to include training.

RECOMMENDED to Full Council:

  1. That a systems analyst for the finance system be commissioned as soon as possible.

 

7) Sickness Monitoring

The committee received an update and noted that following further advice from the Town Council’s senior HR consultant that using the Bradford Factor was not considered to be best practice. The process outlined in the approved staff Handbook under section 10 is best practice and would remain in place to monitor staff sickness.

 

8) Staffing Matters

The committee approved that following an independent job evaluation exercise and recommendation from the Clerk the scale point of affected staff was adjusted to reflect increased responsibilities and qualifications. An allowance had been made in the 2025/26 budget which had been approved by the Full Council in January.

RESOLVED TO:

  1. Approve the amendments to the scale points within the approved budget.
  2. Note the Clerk’s Report

 

9) Staff Recruitment

The committee noted that following the resignation of the Communications and Events Officer as well as their Maternity Cover a recruitment exercise has begun to find a replacement.

The temporary administrative assistant will remain on for a further two months to help the office teams with cover during the above recruitment process.

A new part time Customer Service Officer started work in February to cover lunchtimes and one day a week.

 

 

The meeting concluded at 4:24pm.

 

 

Signed …………………………               Date: 9 June 2025

Chairman