My maternity cover is getting more money.

[babynelly2010]

Hello, I am due to start maternity leave. My cover started today, accidentally some paper work was send to me that contained her salary figure? She was offered more money. we work in local government. She is not very experienced will require a lot of training and I know this because I was showing my work to her today as part of induction.
I have my annual review tomorrow. Is this something I could bring up? How? What can I say? Is this illegal?

Also to add, the difference is about 2k.
She is very yong and clueless about the work I do, no prior experience.

Has she got a permanent role? If so then you are justified being annoyed, but she may not get the same benefits as you and be on a temp contract. In which case she probably won't be entitled to paid maternity leave, or much in the way of other benefits.

Why not raise it in your review though? You could say it looks like you are dye a pay rise and tell them why.

Not illegal, no, and it is common for those covering short term contracts without any job security and (frequently) with less benefits to get a higher base salary.

Her age is irrelevant, but also, presumably there is no reason to think your employer would pay more than they need to to employ the right person? Has the market rate for your job gone up?

I would assume that as you work for local government your salary is benchmarked/categorised/on a set scale, so significant individual negotiation is more difficult, but you could certainly raise your salary as part of your review if you think it perhaps hasn't kept pace with market levels.