Requirement to publish facility time

We reported on the publishing requirements relating to facility time in the public sector in our March bulletin which can be viewed here. The deadline to publish this information is 31 July 2018 – in the March bulletin we outlined which organisations the regulations apply to; what information needs to be published and where this information must be published.

By way of update, as well as publishing the information on a website maintained or on behalf of the employer, organisations are also required to publish this data on a website maintained by or on behalf of the Government. The Cabinet Office is developing a central reporting service to enable organisations to publish their data on a website maintained by or on behalf of the Government. This service will go live on 1 July and be accessible from within gov.uk.

Employers should also be aware of the guidance note ‘Supporting Guidance for the Trade Union (Facility Time Publication Requirements) Regulations 2017’ which has been effective from 1 April 2017. This guidance aims to help relevant public sector employers meet the new legislative requirements – the guidance can be found by clicking here. The guidance makes several recommendations, including:

• To have an agreement which sets out the amount of time off that can be provided whilst recognising fluctuations in use may occur depending on demands on time.
• When using the employee hourly cost to calculate the percentage of the pay bill spent on facility time (see Annex A and Annex B for information on definitions and calculations) it should not be possible to identify individual employees.
• Organisations should put structures in place to collect data at frequent intervals and collate this centrally.

There is specific guidance for academies which can be found at Annex C of the guidance.