Additional payments

The council can make payments to address a temporary addition to an employee’s pay due to acting up or taking on additional duties.

Managers who wish to pay an additional payments should:

1. Seek advice and guidance from the relevant People Business Partner or People Consultant as appropriate.
2. Complete the additional payments form (DOCX, 45KB).
3. Forward the form to additionalpaymentrequest@essex.gov.uk for review.
4. All forms will be assessed at a monthly review panel and sent for approval by the Director, People and Organisation Development.
5. If approved, the form will be returned so the requesting manager can then submit via the Assyst portal.
6. If not approved, the form will be returned to the requesting manager.
7. Any subsequent requests will be reviewed at the next panel.

Acting up allowance

The acting up allowance is payable when an employee agrees to carry out the duties of a higher-graded post for a period of at least four weeks, for any reason other than to cover annual leave. For example, maternity leave or long-term sick leave.

Acting up responsibilities will usually be for a maximum of 12 months. Where there is a need to cover a position for a longer period, consideration should be given to advertising the vacancy more widely.

Who can fill the post

Where there are only one or two employees with the knowledge and skills to act up to the higher-graded role it is relatively easy to identify the jobholders who could reasonably be asked to carry out the higher-graded role. If there are a large number of employees who could act up to the higher-graded role, there will be a need to advertise the temporary acting up arrangement.

Where an employee agrees to carry out the full duties and responsibilities of the higher-graded job, managers can temporarily appoint the employee to the higher-graded role on My Oracle as a secondment.

Employees who undertake part of the duties and responsibilities of the higher-graded role will receive a partial acting up payment. For example, if the employee is covering 50% of the higher-graded duties and responsibilities they would receive 50% of the difference between the rate for job (RFJ) of the higher-graded role and their substantive RFJ.

During the period of acting up the employee is entitled to the full contractual benefits appropriate to the higher-graded post.

Acting up payments:

• are made to employees who agree to carry out partial duties and responsibilities of a high-graded job
• may be shared between two or more employees on a pro-rata basis - managers should seek advice from their People Business Partner on the proportion and distribution of the acting up duties and responsibilities in this situation
• the amount, period and reason will be ratified by Director, People and Organisation Development monthly
• are a pensionable, contractual element of pay and are included in the calculations of benefits such as sick pay and annual leave pay
• are removed once the need for the acting up arrangements no longer exists. Managers are responsible for ensuring that employees receive sufficient notice of this

Additional duties allowance

Additional duties are not the same as acting up. Acting up requires a vacant post for the employee to act up into, whereas additional duties are ‘on top of’ the normal duties and responsibilities of the role.

Employees may be asked to undertake additional duties or responsibilities for a period of time that are in addition to the requirements stated in their role profile, for example when working on a project for example. Where these are significant a manager can recognise and reward this by applying an additional duties payment. 

Additional duties:

• will usually continue for a period of 3 to 12 months
• the manager should seek advice from the relevant People Business Partner regarding period and the percentage to be added
• the amount, period and reason will be ratified by Director, People & Organisation Development monthly
• will be paid to individual employees only
• are pensionable and as such are included in the calculation of benefits such as sick pay and annual leave pay
• could be paid as a one-off sum to recognise that a project has finished, for example, or it could be a monthly amount to recognise an on-going requirement