Part-time council staff: what is pro rata and what is not

Under the Green Book, part-time council employees get the pay and conditions of comparable full-timers in the same authority, scaled in proportion to their hours. Access to training and development and the car allowance scheme are the two things that are not scaled down. Overtime enhancements follow their own rule, which depends on when full-timers would qualify.

The pro rata rule

Part 2 of the Green Book says part-time employees have pay and conditions applied to them pro rata to comparable full-time employees in the same authority. Annual leave works the same way. The entitlement is 23 days, rising to 26 after five years’ continuous service, and it is written for a five-day week. For other patterns an equivalent is calculated, and it can be expressed in hours over the leave year. Temporary employees are treated the same as permanent ones.

Your grade fixes a full-time salary on one or more spinal column points, and your pay is that salary in proportion to your hours. The standard full-time week is 37 hours, or 36 in London. Say your job is a 37-hour post and you work 18.5 hours, half the full-time week. You are paid half the full-time salary and get half the annual leave in hours. The pro rata salary guide has worked sums, and the hourly to annual converter explains the 52.143 factor behind hourly rates.

The Green Book’s pay tables work out an hourly rate by dividing annual salary by 52.143 weeks and then by 37 hours.

What is not scaled down

Two exceptions are written into the same paragraph:

• Training and development. Part-timers should have access equal to full-timers. When they attend training outside their contracted daily hours, they are paid on the same basis as full-timers. A separate paragraph says employees on required training are paid normal earnings, with fees and expenses covered.
• The car allowance scheme, which applies to part-time staff in full, on the same basis as full-timers.

Everywhere else, an employer that treats part-timers worse needs a good reason, which the law calls objective justification, according to GOV.UK. You can ask for a written statement of the reasons.

Overtime and extra hours

Part-timers may not get overtime rates until they have worked beyond a full-timer’s normal hours. The Green Book says the additional hours enhancements, time and a half from Monday to Saturday and double time on Sundays and public holidays, apply to part-time staff only at the times and in the circumstances where full-time staff in that establishment would qualify. Otherwise a full working week for full-time staff must be worked first. If you do an extra two hours on a Tuesday to cover for someone, you would normally be paid plain time until you pass the full-time week, unless a local agreement says otherwise. In the 2024 copy these rates apply to employees on basic pay at or below point 22, and many councils have local agreements that replace them. The overtime and weekend pay guide covers the detail.

Averaged hours

The Green Book allows an individual’s working week to vary from the standard 37 hours, provided the average over a set period does not exceed the standard week. Changes to the working week must be reasonable and given with adequate notice. If your hours are averaged over several weeks, your pay is still based on your contracted hours.

Grading part-time jobs

The job evaluation guidance in the Green Book tells councils not to treat a part-time job differently from a full-time one when grading. For factors such as physical demands, assessors should look at the proportion of the part-timer’s working time in which the demand occurs. A school crossing patroller, for example, is assessed as someone who works outdoors for virtually all their time, even though the hours are short.

What to check

• Your contracted hours and the full-time hours they are compared against.
• The pay line on your offer or contract: is it a full-time figure or your actual pay? The FTE salary guide explains the difference.
• The overtime or additional hours rule your employer applies to part-timers.
• That the 2026 pay award has been applied to your point and scaled to your hours.
• Your rights as a part-time worker if you believe you are being treated less favourably, covered in part-time workers’ rights.