ALARM bells about the cost of a new pay structure for South Lakeland District Council staff were ringing more than six months ago, The Westmorland Gazette can reveal.

Official council documents from a meeting in November show that councillors expressed concern that they had voted for the scheme in September, when the full cost was not known, reports Ellis Butcher.

It is understood that intro-ducing the pay and grading structure known as Job Evaluation across the workforce, could add more than £1 million more than was expected to the council's current £12-million-a-year wage bill.

Three senior council officers remain suspended as a precautionary measure after the anomaly contained in the cost of the new package was confirmed by outside investigators.

The General Purposes Committee made the decision to introduce pay and grading at its September meeting and met again on November 18.

The minutes from that meeting record: "Members felt that they had not been given sufficient information on the future financial consequences of Job Evaluation on the council's pay bill.

"The Director of Finance (Jack Jones) explained that there were still some details of Job Evaluation to be settled, and undertook to contact individual members regarding their queries once the outstanding information was available."

It is understood it was Mr Jones who reported to the committee in January that there had been a "gross underestimation" of the actual potential cost.

The structure was aimed at making wages fairer and was also supported by the council's flagship committee, the Cabinet.

The concern in November arose again when the General Purposes Committee met in January, from which the press and public were excluded.

In the minutes from that meeting, it was recorded that Coun David Vatcher had "wanted his request for a report from the Chief Executive on the cost of job evaluation to be recorded in the minutes of the meeting held on 18, November 2003."

Coun Vatcher was unavailable for comment as the Gazette went to press but has previously refused to speak about the issue.

A meeting on the same day between the GPC and the Cabinet discussed "Job Evaluation Financial Impli-cations."

The minutes from that meeting record how council solicitor Debbie Storr circulated a report that contained: "Serious doubts about the costs of the pay and grading structure."

The meeting was told that "independent external advisers" had been commissioned to "investigate the validity of the concerns and ascertain the causes of any apparent inconsistencies."

At a Cabinet meeting in June last year, Chief Executive Philip Cunliffe presented the structure proposals.

The minutes recorded that: "The financial implications (of job evaluation) were dependent upon the scheme being agreed through the negotiating machinery, but there would be immediate additional costs from increasing the salaries of those persons whose jobs had been evaluated to a higher level."

The council has refused to confirm if the suspended trio are Chief Executive Philip Cunliffe, finance director Jack Jones and human resources manager Andrew Taylor. Customer services director Mike Jones has been appointed acting chief executive and Helen Smith as acting finance director.