The Star: May 06, 2021

Thursday May 6 2021 The Star
THE CITY council will soon
start paying its staff money owed
to them, after it miscalculated
leave entitlements and pay.
The money is owed to them
under the Holidays Act 2003.
An investigation into the payroll
system at the city council found
the series of faults. As a result, the
city council set aside $8.5 million
to review the way
it pays staff and
address potential
back payments that
needed to be made.
City council
head of financial
management Diane
Brandish said the
first payments
would be to current
employees.
“We have reviewed
leave entitlements
and payments
for current and former
employees from April 1,
2011, to December 2019,” she
said.
“It’s been a technically challenging
project, but we now
know what mistakes were made,
how they were made and who
they affected, so we can start
putting things right for people
who were underpaid.”
Brandish said EY was contracted
to help with the work,
as it has the technical expertise
and experience needed, having
worked with other large organisations
that had made similar
payment errors.
Leave entitlements and payments
for 6309 current and former
employees employed during
the 2011 to 2019 period
were reviewed.
Brandish said this
phase of the project will make
back payments to 5779 current
and former employees. The city
council expects to review and
pay staff for this phase of the
project within budget.
She said current employees
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Council to start back paying staff
will receive any money owed to
them in a lump sum payment in
a normal pay in June.
Back payments to former employees
will be managed separately,
through an online claims
service portal.
“We’ll be contacting
former employees who
are owed a back payment in July,
using the last contact details we
have for them,” Brandish said.
“If people don’t hear from
us, it will be because we either
haven’t been able to contact
them or their pay was correct
and no back payment is owed –
but they will be able to register
online to check.”
The former employee claims
service will be available online
from July 19.
Brandish said the errors were
due to misinterpretations of the
Holidays Act 2003. In 2018 the
Government launched a review
of the Act and has since
accepted 22 recommendations
from
the taskforce
set up to carry
out the review.
“We regularly
review
our systems
and processes under
our continuous improvement
programme,”
Brandish said.
“In 2016, we reviewed our
compliance with the Holidays
Act 2003 and in 2017 we identified
that, in some situations,
we had underpaid leave entitlements
and payments for some
current and former staff.”
After this was discovered, the
city council had a legal obligation
to check entitlements and
payments over the previous six
years.
Phase two of the project is
now under way and includes
updating council systems and
processes to enable compliance
with the Act and a second
remediation calculation to cover
the period since January 2020.
NEWS 5
Little rain
in forecast
SUMMER MAY have ended –
but April was still much warmer
and much drier than normal
throughout New Zealand.
Thirty-four locations had nearrecord
or record high maximum
temperatures in April, NIWA
meteorologist Chris Brandolino
told Morning Report.
“Christchurch ... what’s impressive
had their second warmest
April mean maximum temperature
on record,” he said.
“Their records go back into the
1800s, that’s an extensive history.”
Timaru also saw a maximum
temperature of 30.8 deg C in
Timaru on April 4, NIWA figures
show – the country’s fourth highest
April temperature on record.
The outlook for winter weather
and much-needed rain over the
next three months to the end of
July remained on the dry and
warmer side, Brandolino said.
“If there’s kind of a warm lean
for temperatures and kind of a
dry lean for rainfall, it certainly
doesn’t bode well, that’s for sure,”
he said.
“Unfortunately, the next several
days we’re not going to get much.”
Six of the past eight years have
been among New Zealand’s
warmest on record, according to
previous NIWA reports.
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