Labour councillors turn on Cabinet in row over teachers’ pay funding

Alec Doyle, Local Democracy Reporter

A council’s cabinet has come under fire after seemingly reneging on a commitment to ensure schools keep any additional money as a result of the teachers’ pay award.

Flintshire County Council has been given £516,000 to top-up its funding for teachers’ pay after Welsh Government agreed a 4% rise for educators this year.

But that money has not been passed on by the Labour-led coalition – causing consternation across the floor.

A Notice of Motion titled ‘Stopping the Steal, fair funding for Flintshire Schools” submitted by Flintshire People’s Voice Cllr Carolyn Preece – who is also on the Education, Youth and Culture Overview and Scrutiny Committee – attracted vocal support from Labour councillor Fran Lister.

“I appreciate speaking in support of this motion places me at odds with those I sit with but I think in this issue the Cabinet’s position is indefensible,” said the member for Brynford.

“The funding for the 4% pay award was already allocated as a cost pressure in our budget in February. The extra £516,000 is genuinely additional because we weren’t guaranteed to get it at budget setting.

“This money has been provided since then specifically to support schools with pay pressures and that money is urgently needed now.

“The Education Scrutiny Committee made a clear recommendation that Cabinet should reconsider and release the additional Welsh Government Funding to schools – that recommendation has been ignored.

“Meanwhile our schools are under pressure that I don’t think everyone in this chamber fully appreciates. We have schools in active industrial action, others approaching crisis.

“The collective schools budget is in a significant deficit and our highly respected headteachers have written to us to warn us that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to guarantee safe and viable education for our pupils.

“Against that backdrop I find it extraordinary that the Cabinet Member for Education and the Chief Office for Education continue to defend retaining this money.

“Education has to be one of our absolute priorities. These children – in their one chance at education – are our future. Our future economy,  our future healthy communities, our future resilient, kind and diverse societies.

“We cannot afford to stifle that by starving schools of resources. It may be a drop in the ocean, but £516,000 is equivalent to 12 teachers. We could replace 12 of those people who took voluntary redundancy where the schools couldn’t afford to lose them.”

Shortfall

Back in February when full council voted to cut school budgets by 2.5% Welsh Government had not yet agreed a pay settlement for teachers.

To ensure there was no financial shortfall it provided an additional 3% to each authority’s settlement for teachers’ pay. Flintshire agreed to set aside 4% however, to prevent the need to find additional funds if the pay award was higher than 3%.

Councillors also voted in favour of a recommendation from Deputy Leader Cllr Richard Jones which said that if the pay award was less than 4%, the remainder of the money would be moved into the schools budget.

Now Welsh Government has topped up Flintshire’s coffers with an additional £516,000 to pay teachers. Having already awarded 4%, the authority is now refusing to pass the additional money to schools.

“The 2.5% cut means that schools have received no net funding for teacher’s pay,” said Cllr Preece. “Every penny of the uplift has had to be found by cuts to teaching staff, support staff, pastoral programmes – cuts that directly impact Flintshire children.

“This council passed a clear instruction, a democratic mandate, that any financial benefit divulged from the final pay award agreed by the Department of Education for Wales, be allocated to school budgets.

“There was no ambiguity, no footnote, no caveat. It is morally indefensible that the Cabinet, having already delivered multi-million pound cuts now chooses to hold back additional funding given explicitly for teachers’ pay.

“It is a breach of trust, a breach of the letter and the spirit of the council voting mandate and more seriously a breach of our duty to young people we are elected to serve.

“Today we ask that the £516,000 intended for schools is given to schools. No more, no less.”

Compensation 

Deputy Leader of the council and Cabinet Member for Finance and Social Value Cllr Paul Johnson defended the decision.

“Every local authority has to make a reasonable assumption about teachers’ pay when it sets its budgets,” he said. “In Flintshire – despite the very real financial pressures and competing priorities across the council we took the decision to build in a 4% uplift for teachers’ pay in the delegated schools budget.

“After that Welsh Government confirmed a funding contribution of £10.411m to local authorities – Flintshire’s share of that was £516,000 for the period September 2025 to March 2026.

“That was an additional 1% above the assumption in the  Local Government settlement.

“In other words there was grant there to reimburse the council for the extra it had put in above the 3%.

“In our case that’s exactly what it does, it compensates us for the additional amount we had already built into schools for our approved budget.

“When the budget was set we agreed that any headroom between 4% and a lower award would be retained in schools and that would have been extra money for them.

“However the uplift was 4% so there is no spare headroom. Schools get the full 4% that we planned for, there’s nothing on top to distribute.

“I think the treatment is fair and reasonable. It does two things – one, it makes sure schools are fully funded with the actual pay award and two, it recognises council has already gone beyond the 3% assumption in the Welsh Government settlement when we set our budget.

“This is broadly in-line with what other councils have done.”

Ignored 

But his explanation did not satisfy another fellow Labour councillor – Saltney representative Ryan McKeown.

“The Education Scrutiny Committee originally recommended no cuts to education when setting the budget, this was ignored.

“Education Scrutiny then subsequently asked Cabinet to reconsider what it does with this half a million pounds and again we’ve been ignored.

“What is the point of scrutiny if we continue to be ignored?”

Despite their arguments, the motion fell by six votes.