1.Does your council currently make it a contractual condition that your externally commissioned homecare providers must pay their homecare workers for their travel time?
The councils contract states ‘acknowledging that the “Service Purchaser’s aspiration (is) that the care workforce is paid at least £10/hour for delivering personal care services AND The Price, in relation to the hourly rate stated on the Individual Contract, shall be the rate for every hour purchased irrespective of when delivered and be inclusive of travelling costs (mileage and time).
2. Does your council ever review the payslips and minimum wage records of your externally commissioned providers to monitor compliance with the national living wage?
A survey was conducted in 2018 to ensure compliance and contracts allow for audits of the providers.
3. Please list the steps that your council has taken to ensure that your externally commissioned care providers are paying their home care workers at least the national living wage.
An significant investment of £3.6M has been made to the private provider market to enable them to pay a minimum of £10 per hour worked. This was implemented at the start of the pandemic and places DCC within the top 10 nationally of provider rates of pay
Whilst we cannot legally enforce that providers flow this investment down to their workforce pay, the contract terms require them to accommodate the aspiration of paying £10 per hour for each hour worked in order to reward and value their workforce and support recruitment and retention
4. What action, if any, would the council take against any externally commissioned care providers that have been found to be non-compliant with paying the national living wage?
Initial action to understand whether the error is caused by a lack of understanding of the statutory requirement or a known non- adherence- and action taken accordingly with advice from HMRC
We would work with the provider and HMRC to identify support needed to mitigate the issue caused to workers
Depending on the outcome of the process, we would mitigate risk of provider failure to minimise impact on clients and aim to support the workforce to continue in the personal care sector