NIPS Review of Pay Structures, Allowances and Modelling

Tender description

The Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) is an Executive agency of the Department of Justice as of 12 April 2010. The Prison Service currently operates under the control of the Department of Justice. It is governed by the Prison Act (Northern Ireland) 1953 and the Prison and Young Offenders Rules (Northern Ireland) 1995. There are three Prisons in Northern Ireland which comprise HMP Maghaberry and HMP Magilligan which accommodate adult male prisoners and Hydebank Wood Prison and Young Offenders Centre (YOC) which accommodates both Young Offenders and adult female Prisoners. Additional information about the NIPS is available on www.niprisonservice.gov.uk The model will be based upon NIPS current payroll, inclusive of uniformed and civil service grades. NIPS have around 2,200 staff, 1750 uniformed with the balance general civil servants. Whilst the main thrust of the model will be on uniformed staff, there will be a requirement and need to also understand the future effect of pay upon general civil servant grades. NIPS is undertaking a four year change programme. As part of the initial phase of the programme NIPS plans to offer an Exit Package to Prison Officers and recruit Support Officers. NIPS is also looking at its current support grades, those of Operational Support and Night Custody officers, and reviewing options to assimilate them into the proposed support grade. To inform the process NIPS would like to develop a more informative methodology to model its future pay costs. We propose to download current data from our Compass Pay System and use the data as the basis for running future scenarios. The model developed will also be informed by a range of controllable parameters, including new grades, pay scales, and a number of definable parameters as set out within the specification to inform decision making by senior management.