Ms Oonagh Buckley:

Most of these allowances have specific definitions. Supervisory allowances are very clearly paid where somebody might be brought in. There is a pay rate for the head services officer grade but there would be an allowance for somebody who is brought in, often after a competition, as a deputy supervisor or, as Mr. Watt suggested, as an officer in charge of a building subject to a head supervisor who is in charge of a complex.

Allowances including the driving and franking allowances, many of which date from the dawn of time, were brought in to account for additional roles. While a services officer may be paid according to a services-officer scale, some services officers have functions that were regarded as being of higher responsibility, certainly at the time in question. Being in charge of a franking machine, for example, involves financial responsibilities so an allowance would have been introduced at the time in question to reflect responsibilities beyond those of a standard services officer. Clearly, these pay structures are now not reflective of the sorts of normal flexibilities we expect of civil servants, including those at service office grade. As in other sectors where allowance-based pay structures are in place, we intend to consider introducing a more modern pay structure reflective of the fact that one officer might have responsibility that is at a very low level while another officer might have a responsibility that is at a higher level. The allowances, however, would not have titles such as "driving allowance" or "franking allowance". The system would allow for the movement of persons into different roles. This is work that has been done in a number of different areas; it simply has not been done yet for the services officers. It is the sort of work we would like to do on the pay structures of services officers. It takes time, however, because one must do pay banding, for example. It is a more elaborate exercise than could be carried out in-----