Correspondence

Remit letter from the Home Secretary to the NCARRB on the 2023 to 2024 pay award (accessible version)

Published 16 August 2023

Home Secretary
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
www.gov.uk/home-office

Zoë Billingham
Chair of the National Crime Agency Remuneration Review Body
By email only

15 August 2023

Dear Zoë,

National Crime Agency Remuneration Review Body remit 2023/24

I would first like to offer my thanks for the work of the NCA Remuneration Review Body (NCARRB) over the past year on the eighth report and your recommendations for pay round 2022/23. I was grateful for your sound advice on NCA pay last year, given the wider fiscal context, and I look forward to continuing to work with you. It is a legal requirement that I am provided with independent advice on pay for those NCA officers with operational powers under the provisions of the Crime and Courts Act 2013.

I should, therefore, like to ask for your recommendations on the pay to consider the implications for the whole NCA workforce, those officers with operational powers and those without. The Agency has championed a ‘One NCA’ culture in which the distinction between warranted and non-warranted officers is not a simplistic relationship between operational and non-operational roles. A uniform pay settlement is imperative to maintain a unified workforce with warranted and non-warranted officers working side by side. I would like to recognise that by ensuring that officers are treated equitably when it comes to pay. The pay of NCA officers without operational powers remains a matter for the NCA to decide, taking account of the Civil Service Pay Guidance.

I was pleased to agree, with my Ministerial colleagues, to allow departments to make a fixed payment of £1,500 to civil servants in delegated grades in recognition of their public service and the challenges of the cost of living. It is right that this should also be considered across the NCA workforce, even though it doesn’t automatically apply to civil servants who are covered by pay remit bodies. However, the government must balance the need to ensure fair pay for public sector workers with protecting funding for frontline services and ensuring affordability for taxpayers. We must ensure that the affordability of a pay award is taken into consideration so that the NCA is able to recruit and retain a workforce that is motivated and capable of meeting the evolving threat posed by serious and organised crime. Therefore you should give due consideration to this payment when making your recommendations for the pay of NCA Officers.

In considering your recommendations, you should therefore have regard to the following:

1. the affordability of any proposals;

2. evidence of recruitment, retention and vacancy rates within the NCA and its ability to maintain competitiveness with its key comparator markets;

3. evidence of the Agency’s improvements to productivity and workforce efficiencies;

4. the Agency’s ‘One NCA’ policy;

5. the headline pay awards recommended by the other Pay Review Bodies for the 23/24 pay awards; and

6. the Civil Service pay remit guidance for 2023/24 which allows for departments to make an average pay award of up to 4.5%, with flexibility to make awards up to an additional 0.5% to be targeted at lower pay bands. The Addendum guidance dated 2 June 2023 gave departments the flexibility to award a £1500 non-consolidated bonus per full-time employee to those in delegated grades. The NCA has elected to defer any payment pending NCARRB’s report.

As the NCA is a Non-Ministerial Department, the Agency will provide you with its own evidence on points 1 to 4 above, based on its workforce assessments and the Review Body’s terms of reference. My officials within the Home Office will be engaged in this and, where necessary, will provide additional information.

As part of its evidence, the NCA will set out the operational context, Agency pay strategy and long-term plans for its workforce, which I expect to be submitted to you in good time.

To allow adequate time for consultation before any changes are applied, I should be grateful if you could aim to provide a report in a timely manner, being mindful of the NCA annual pay award date of 1 August 2023. I accept that this will not be possible but striving to advance quickly will be the best way to reward NCA officers.

Yours sincerely,

Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP

Home Secretary