Policies and Procedures

Social Partnership Duty Annual Report

Social Partnership Duty Annual Report 2025

Report Agreed by Cabinet on 7^th July 2025

Context

The Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023 (The SPPP) requires the council, as a public body, to produce an annual report to evidence how they have complied with the Social Partnership Duty.  This report must be submitted to the Social Partnership Council (SCP) for scrutiny. Section 18 of the Act states:

Social Partnership reports:

1. A public body must prepare, in respect of each financial year, a report of what it has done to comply with the duty.
2. The report must be agreed with the public body’s recognised trade unions or (where there is no recognised trade union) other representatives of its staff, or contain a statement explaining why it was not agreed.
3. The public body must publish the report, and submit it to the SPC, as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of the financial year.

 The SPPP Act does not provide a template for the Annual Report. This report summarises the actions taken with the council’s recognised trade unions to implement the duty in Pembrokeshire County Council.

Background

The SPPP Act provides for a framework to enhance the well-being of the people of Wales by improving public services through social partnership working, promoting fair work and social responsible public procurement. It is intended to complement other legislation, including the Socio-economic Duty and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 (WFGA 2015).

The SPPP Act 2023 requires the council, in carrying out sustainable development, in so far as is reasonable, to seek consensus or compromise with their recognised trade unions, when setting their well-being objectives (in line with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015) and making decisions of a strategic nature about the reasonable steps they intend to take to deliver those objectives set.

Section 16(2) of the Act sets out a number of specific requirements relating to the Duty, which the council must comply with when ‘seeking consensus or compromise’. The requirements are intended to ensure that trade unions are fully and properly involved when a public body sets its well-being objectives, or when making strategic decisions.  It states that: in order to seek consensus or compromise, a public body must include its recognised trade unions or other representatives of its staff in the process of setting objectives or making decisions, by (in particular):-

(a) consulting them at a formative stage of the process, and

(b) otherwise involving them throughout the process by:

1. providing sufficient information to enable them to properly consider what is proposed, and
2. providing sufficient time to enable them to adequately consider what is proposed and respond.

The Social Partnership Handbook describes this as the Welsh Way of Social Partnership, which differs from positional bargaining or adversarial winner and loser approaches. Both sides should enter into discussion in good faith. There will be occasions where common ground is impossible to establish; but where there is conflict, it should be managed within a culture of respect and problem-solving. Social partnerships, therefore, need to create an environment which encourages participants to be open with each other and agree working arrangements that are mutually acceptable to each partner in a spirit of co-operation and collaboration.

Social Partnership in Pembrokeshire 2024/25

In preparation for the legislation which came into effect on 1^st April 2024, colleagues from the trade unions and HR began discussing how we would work together to implement the legislation.  At the Joint Negotiation and Consultation Group (JNCG) in July 2023 we started the discussion. An early decision was made to rename the JNCG the Social Partnership Forum (SPF) and invite our colleague, the Corporate Policy & Partnerships Manager, to become a permanent member of the Forum.

The SPF meets quarterly, it is led by the Leader and Chief Executive. Two Cabinet members with responsibility for Finance and Workforce attend and two Senior Leadership members, the Director of Resources and the Director of Education. The Forum is supported by Senior HR Colleagues and Corporate Policy. In total representatives of 8 Trade Unions attend the meeting, local Branch members and Regional Officers from UNISON, UNITE, GMB, NEU, NAHT, ASCL, NASUWT and UCAC.   Our TU s therefore have direct access to both the Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive at the SPF who both regularly attend which shows the level of commitment Pembrokeshire has to partnership working.

We were engaged early on with Social Partnership ‘the Welsh Way’ and the Chief HR Officer together with both UNISON & UNITE attended an early engagement event in Carmarthen on the 24^th August 2023, meeting the Welsh Government team and networking other public sector bodies. The Chief HR Officer and the UNISON Branch Chair gave a joint presentation to the Social Partnership conference at the West Wales Social Partnership Conference at the Liberty Stadium Swansea on the 25^th September 2024. Our local TU s attended and this provided a really positive opportunity for us to spend time together, focussing on what social partnership means for us. 

The Chief HR Officer was also part of the Welsh Government’s SP training steering group representing the Welsh HRD network. The e-learning is available on our Learning Management platform.

The Corporate Policy & Partnerships Manager consulted TU s on the Council’s Self-Assessment at the 26^th June 2024 SPF he clarified that the report covered the previous financial year and evaluated how the Authority had met its targets, the discussion served as an introduction to TU s as to expectations for the forthcoming consultation on the Corporate Strategy 2025-2030.  He advised that the approach to the framework was a structure of key corporate headline themes and presented an overview of the objectives.  At the SPF on 23^rd January 2025 the Corporate Policy & Partnerships Manager consulted          with the TU s directly on the draft Corporate Strategy Well-being objectives for 2025 – 2030. 

• Our Future - enabling the best start in life for our children and young people, equipping them with skills for the future.

• Our Place - prosperous places, with clean, safe and sustainable environments, where people can live well and thrive.

• Our Communities - caring for people, and enabling active, resourceful and connected communities.

• Our Council - a financially sustainable, well-governed Council, with a workforce equipped to support the people we serve.

We could already demonstrate that we met some aspects of the legislation – we have a long history of working together in social partnership.  However, our trade unions view was that there should have been involved in the process from the outset and had expected earlier consultation on the Corporate Strategy. The Corporate Policy & Partnerships Manager took that on board and offered a further opportunity to amend the Strategy and provide additional commentary on the role of TU s in Social Partnership which was noted and fed back.

In future TU s will be consulted on the Council’s well-being objectives as key stakeholders, and from an early stage in the development process.  In our discussions around the new duty, we recognised together that this would require us to set aside more time for this when next reviewing our well-being objectives.

It is to be acknowledged that in Pembrokeshire we work collaboratively with our trade unions to promote the fair work and fostering meaningful engagement, besides the SPF our Senior Leadership Team hold regular consultative meetings in their Directorates to ensure staff voices are heard in decision making processes, particularly on issues relating to employment conditions, staffing changes such as restructures and policy development and workforce wellbeing.

 

The SPF has Budget Setting and Financial Planning as a standing Agenda item; in the Directorates and Services TU s are included in discussions on budget setting and provided with business cases regarding allocation of resources to different services, managing funding cuts, and deciding on council tax rates to encourage a consultative approach to balancing public service demands and financial sustainability.

 

Other topics raised at the SPF in the past year include Net Zero, Strategic Workforce Planning [ incl. the development of career pathways and Apprenticeships ], Pay & Grading incl. changes to the Pay Policy Statement, Health & Wellbeing,

 

Employment Policies are signed off at the SPF and throughout 2024/25 we have reviewed and amended the following policies, in line with both our regular timetable of review and statutory changes;

1. Recruitment

2. Redeployment

3. Harassment & Bullying [ to address 3^rd Party Harassment and Risk Management ]

4. Alcohol & Drugs Policy [ agreement on a local testing protocol ]

5. Political Restricted Posts

6. Social Media

7. Menopause

8. Maternity & Family & Neonatal Leave

9. Time Off and Special Leave [ local enhancement to our Bereavement Leave entitlement  &  training leave for all Military Reservists furthering our credentials as a GOLD recipient of the Veterans Pledge ].

10. Flexible Working

With the imminent arrival of the Labour Governments Employment Rights Bill, there is likely to be increased consultation on the impact of changes in employment law throughout 2025/26.

Case study

The Chair of the local UNISON Branch, Manuela Hughes worked successfully to strengthen social partnership by contributing to a very successful menopause awareness campaign alongside HR & Occupational Health teams.  Workplace representatives in 2023 were reporting an increase in members raising menopause related issues emboldened with the increased mainstream debate around the menopause. At the same time UNISON’s Regional Officer had been a contributor to the British Standards Institute 2023 publication on menopause in the workplace which served as a valuable source of evidence and resource.  Manuela organised a menopause conference in 2023 to help fill the ‘awareness’ gap. This was held at our Business Park in Pembroke Dock. The event was open to TU members and non-members alike, key stakeholders were invited from Pembrokeshire County Council, Pembrokeshire College and the National Park, but also small private care providers; the word spread and attendees came from a variety of sectors which enabled the sharing of good practice and networking opportunities.Invited speakers included Pembrokeshire County Council’s Cabinet Officer for Wellbeing, a Consultant Lead in the Integrated Sexual Health and Menopause Service, Thompsons Solicitors, PCC’s Occupational Health, Safety & Wellbeing Manager as well as speakers from the TUC.A further piece of work involved HR, Occupational Health and the Trade Unions developing and publishing a bespoke Menopause Policy using the British Standards Institute 2023 publication as main resource. “Every year thousands of women leave their work/career early due to menopause symptoms. This a huge pool of skills and knowledge – in other words assets - we are at risk of losing. By removing the stigma we can start moving towards greater understanding. and with it finding workplace solutions (instead of just seeing “the problem”). In my view this is a great example of illustrating how collaborative working can achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.” Manuela UNISON Chair

Case study