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FOREWORD
Foreword by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth
This Government has a very clear Purpose - to create a successful Scotland through increasing sustainable economic growth.
This is underpinned by our fifteen National Outcomes.
Achieving this Purpose and delivering these outcomes drives all our decisions.
Scottish public bodies and their Boards have a vital role to play in helping us achieve our goals by ensuring that their organisations deliver the outcomes expected of them.
We have to achieve our aims within the tightest financial settlement provided to any Scottish Administration, so we need to spend the resources available in the best possible way to have the maximum impact on delivering our Purpose. It is therefore essential that we maintain moderate, affordable and sustainable pay settlements. We have therefore provided for modest increases in pay: the limits for Chief Executives being the same as that for other staff in their organisations.
There has also been keen and legitimate interest in the reward packages and particularly bonuses (non-consolidated performance payments) paid to senior staff across the country. The pay policy is therefore more explicit on the link between pay and performance: it provides more guidance on what might constitute exceptional performance and how that should reflect the level of bonus being proposed. Chief Executive proposals that include a bonus payment must be based on evidence of exceptional performance and not paid to individuals simply for meeting routine objectives.
I am also asking Chairs of public bodies covered by this policy to invite Chief Executives to consider, in the light of the current economic climate, waiving, on a voluntary basis, some or all of any bonus that may be due in to them in 2009-10. The funding set aside for which should remain available for use within the body concerned to direct to other objectives.
The pay policy we have put in place offers a realistic approach to public sector pay increases in the current financial climate. I expect you to comply fully with this pay policy and work within its parameters. It is a policy which is right for public bodies, right for Scotland and works towards our Purpose of increasing sustainable economic growth.
John Swinney
Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth
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