Tuesday’s  Babergh District Council Meeting was a quiet affair being mainly concerned with formalities of approving matters already agreed upon elsewhere. For example who sits on and who leads the various sub committees.
However at the back of the morning we got around to looking at paper “N9 Pay Policy Statement 2013/14”. It was introduced in a gentle way. We were reminded that our approval was required in accordance with Section 38(1) of the Localism Act 2011.
However, under Financial Implications, we were informed that “The pay policy has been produced within existing resources and there are no financial implications”
I interpreted this statement to mean that Babergh produced the policy without chopping down any more trees than had already been killed in manufacturing the paper and that (perhaps) more importantly we had not used any external consultants.
This was not the information I would have liked. As always the key to analysis is not only to examine what is in front of you but what you are not seeing and what I was not seeing was an indication of how much this policy was costing us on a year on year basis.
After much standing up and sitting down the Chief Executive affirmed that there would  be no increase in the payroll as a result of the policy. I was grateful for the unequivocal statement along these lines and thanked the Chairman, the Chief Executive and the Head of Corporate Organisation.
It was like pulling teeth without anaesthetic .
Whilst I was congratulating myself of achieving unexpected reactions it did occur to me that perhaps there will be increases in the overall payroll but they won’t be due to the policy but to something else.
I’ll ponder on this when the time comes, probably in the small hours of a morning.