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Trade unions

RFI-2026-0119
Friday, 30 January 2026

Request

1. The details of any office accommodation your organisation provides to staff to carry out trade union business. Please include details of:
• space measured in square feet
• how much of this space is contained within entirely separate buildings (i.e. occupied solely by staff carrying out trade union business)
• whether a professional valuation of the market rental value of the space has been sought either in-house or externally, and if so, what the valuation of the space was
• any charges the council levy for office space given to trade unions.
2. Do you deduct trade union subscriptions for any of your employees via payroll (sometimes known as the "check off" system)? If so, do you charge a fee to the trade unions concerned for providing this service?

3. With regard to trade union facility time, please provide the total cost of facility time from your pay bill for the financial year 2024/25 and the budget for the current financial year. Please also advise the current number of employees that you fund to be union officials, measured as full time equivalents? (For guidance on definitions please refer to the Government's Transparency Code for local government: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-government-transparency-code-2015/local-government-transparency-code-2015)

4. Please advise any estimates for other costs met for those staff on trade union facility time apart from salaries - including travel expenses, office supplies, telephone expenses and energy bills.

Response

1). We do not provide any specific space for Trade Union business.
2). Yes we do deduct subscriptions from payroll but we don’t charge a fee to the unions for this
3). This information is available to view on our Transparency page on our website
4). None of these costs are paid