Recruitment and Retention Allowance payments

7/30/2024

Dear Members,

Some of you will have recently been advised whether you will receive a Recruitment and Retention Allowance (RRA) payment for 2024/25.

This year, the assessment process initially mirrored that which has been refined over several years whereby Commands submit applications for roles assessed as experiencing recruitment and retention pressures. These applications are then considered by the HR Pay & Reward Team against a matrix which objectively assesses the actual level of recruitment and retention issues in comparison with other submissions received.

Moderation exercises then take place with representatives from all commands and observed by the NCOA, where we hope to give confidence that the process is both fair and transparent.

As the NCOA has consistently reported to the NCARRB, the payments of RRA’s is far from perfect. Often, the level of payments are too low to have any real impact and over a number of years they have morphed into a compensation mechanism for roles which are not on the Spot Rate (SR) pay mechanism. The limited nature of the non-consolidated budget (which is capped at 1% of the NCA pay bill), adds further pressures on a system which has never properly managed the financial impact felt by officers when RRA’s are removed as part of the yearly assessment. The pressures on this limited budget were always going to be further stretched this year now that that the Agency has signaled that SR’s no longer form part of its future pay plans and much needed structural reform of NCA pay systems are being considered.

That said, NCOA members have drawn some comfort that decisions taken on RRA allocations have been made in line with a defined process. It is therefore extremely disappointing to report that having recently taken part in an extensive RRA moderation process, the Senior Leadership of the Agency has chosen to ignore its outcomes.

Instead, in a closed session (from which the Trade Unions were excluded), Senior Leaders (including the DG’s) have chosen to overturn the evidence-based decisions of the RRA Sub-Committee and only renew the RRA payments received by officers in 2023/24. Despite evidence to the contrary, the Agency will not allocate payments to new bids submitted for 2024/25.

We understand that the agency has still yet to fully assess the exact number of roles eligible for a RRA payment but by ignoring this year’s assessment process; a number of NCA officers will not receive a RRA payment - despite clear support to receive it.  

In the Remuneration Committee meeting on the 23rd July 2024, the NCOA made it clear that we did not support the decisions taken by the Agency. Rather than sticking to the arbitrary process made by the DG’s, the RRA budget should be stretched to include the additional roles alongside the 2023/24 roll over applications. We will continue to urge the Agency to reconsider this step which clearly undermines the Rem Com and the assessments carried out through its own recognised processes. 

If you are impacted by this decision, please contact NCOA membership at membership@ncoa.org.uk for further information.

Regards,

Steve BOND
NCOA National Officer.