Social Partnership Duty Annual Report 2024 – 2025

Context

The Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023 (The SPPP) requires the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority (the “Authority”) as a public body, to produce an annual report to evidence how they have complied with the Social Partnership Duty.  This report must be submitted to the Social Partnership Council (SCP) for scrutiny. Section 18 of the Act states:

Social Partnership reports:

A public body must prepare, in respect of each financial year, a report of what it has done to comply with the duty.

The report must be agreed with the public body’s recognised trade unions or (where there is no recognised trade union) other representatives of its staff, or contain a statement explaining why it was not agreed.

The public body must publish the report, and submit it to the SPC, as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of the financial year.

The SPPP Act does not provide a template for the Annual Report. This report summarises the actions taken with the council’s recognised trade unions to implement the duty in the Authority.

Background

The SPPP Act provides for a framework to enhance the well-being of the people of Wales by improving public services through social partnership working, promoting fair work and social responsible public procurement. It is intended to complement other legislation, including the Socio-economic Duty and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 (WFGA 2015).

The SPPP Act 2023 requires the Authority, in carrying out sustainable development, in so far as is reasonable, to seek consensus or compromise with their recognised trade unions, when setting their well-being objectives (in line with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015) and making decisions of a strategic nature about the reasonable steps they intend to take to deliver those objectives set.

Section 16(2) of the Act sets out a number of specific requirements relating to the Duty, which the Authority must comply with when ‘seeking consensus or compromise’. The requirements are intended to ensure that trade unions are fully and properly involved when a public body sets its well-being objectives, or when making strategic decisions.  It states that: in order to seek consensus or compromise, a public body must include its recognised trade unions or other representatives of its staff in the process of setting objectives or making decisions, by (in particular):-

(a) consulting them at a formative stage of the process, and

(b) otherwise involving them throughout the process by:

providing sufficient information to enable them to properly consider what is proposed, and

providing sufficient time to enable them to adequately consider what is proposed and respond.

The Social Partnership Handbook describes this as the Welsh Way of Social Partnership, whereby social partnerships create an environment which encourages participants to be open with each other and agree working arrangements that are mutually acceptable to each partner in a spirit of co-operation and collaboration.

Social Partnership within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park 2024/25

In preparation for the legislation which came into effect on 1^st April 2024, colleagues from the Pembrokeshire UNISON Branch, our Head of People Services and Chief Executive began discussing how we would work together to implement the legislation.

We are a small employer with 135 FTE, 217 Headcount. We have a long history of working collaboratively with our trade unions to promote fair work and meaningful engagement. We work to agree or achieve consensus and understanding.

We have a Staff Representative Group with representatives from across the Authority as well as our local UNISON Representative; our Head of People Services attends and acts as the link with the management board. This is the main Forum where Policies are consulted, and staff have an open Agenda for discussion and engagement.

The Staff Representative Group meets every six weeks, its role is to:

Act as a collective voice for staff issues and concerns.

Improve common understanding regarding issues and opportunity facing the Authority and its staff.

Act as a sounding board for a variety of new initiatives and any significant changes in strategic focus, policy or ‘ways of working’; and

Help create a culture of openness and act as an ideas forum and working group to create a ‘Great Place to Work’ for everyone working at the Authority

Topics discussed during 2024/25 included:

Updates on the Pay & Grading exercise and aligned procedures for Appeal

Training & Development requirements

Health & Safety Training

Initiating a network of Staff Wellbeing Champions

Improvements in Staff Benefits

Engagement on topics to raise at the All Staff Meeting held In November 2024

Staff Volunteering initiatives and Charity events

Engagement on employment policies under review

The Chief Executive, the Head of People Services together with local UNISON Branch members attended the West Wales Social Partnership Conference at the Liberty Stadium Swansea on the 25^th September 2024. This was a really positive opportunity for us to understand the intention and purpose of the Act and what social partnership means for us.

We didn’t review our Well-being Objectives in 2024-2025, we did engage TU partners in amending our Delivery Plans and Corporate and Resources Plan to ensure that the aspirations of the Social Partnership are fully embedded into our future engagement strategy. Our Chief Executive initiated TU engagement for evaluation of these plans for 2025/26.

The topic that required a lot of management and TU capacity was the implementation of a revised Pay & Grading Framework, underpinned by the NJC Job Evaluation Scheme, at the start of January 2024. This was a major piece of work that was all consuming. We are incredibly thankful for the support of the TU s in engaging with this extremely difficult exercise.  Our UNISON Branch are integral to the governance and oversight of our ongoing management of our Grade Framework and Job Evaluation.

Health and Wellbeing, was also a major focus in 2024/25, creating a network of Wellbeing Champions is the foundation further work in this area.

We have used the materials provided by the Welsh Government Social Partnership team and completed the self-assessment tool to act as a benchmark for our progress. We are also aware of the training modules and will this year encourage representatives and members of our Staff Representative Group to review the modules. We are working to upload the e-learning to our e-learning platform to remove the barrier of our staff registering with Learning@Wales.

The Senior Leadership Team and the Trade Unions have been consulted on this Social Partnership Duty Annual Report and have agreed its content.