NHS, acting up and increments

[JessicaBrassica]

I've worked for the NHS for 3.5years. I came in as a B5, and after 18m, I was offered the opportunity to act up in a B6 role for 12 months.

The B6 is now regarded as permanent. My manager tells me it's permanent although I was accidentally dropped back to a B5 last summer because someone forgot to tick a box to roll the B6 contract on.

Having been a B6 for 2 years, and having met all my objectives in my last review, I was expecting an increment this month. It didn't happen.

Doing a bit of research, acting up roles aren't supposed to last 2 years, so I'm not sure there is a mechanism to get an increment with a long standing acting up role.
Does anyone know?
I've tried phoning and emailing my line manager. And so far she's cancelled 2 meetings and isn't responding to my emails.

NHS HR Manager here. If the Band 6 role is now permanent there's no reason you shouldn't be entitled to increment (so long as you have met local conditions e.g. compliant with stat/mand training, satisfactory performance at appraisal and not subject to any conduct warnings etc) and time spent acting-up into the grade is usually counted. However I'm a bit about your manager blithely just telling you your B6 role was now permanent but there being issues with 'boxes being ticked' and 'rolling your contract on' - for a start promotions are not normally made permanent in the NHS just on a manager's say-so, you nearly always have to go through at least a notional process of applying for the role and being confirmed as suitable before you can be made permanent in a higher grade and there's quite a lot of behind the scenes paperwork to go through to make that happen. Then you would normally receive some kind of confirmation from HR, not normally a full new contract but a letter confirming your permanent change of status. The fact none of this happened suggests your manager may not have done the paperwork properly and just left you on an acting up status indefinitely. Does your trust have ESR self-service, if so I'd log on and see if your payslips or assignment status still say acting-up (should say 'active assignment' as the normal/default setting), or if not you can call HR (there's usually some kind of call centre/advice line) and ask them to check for you.

However to reassure you, I was recently due an increment myself and panicked when my pay didn't change that my service must be wrong on ESR or I'd forgotten to do my mandatory training or something - looked into it with payroll and they told me that for reasons even I didn't follow, they process all increments the month after they fall due (so if your increment date was 1st March they wouldn't process it until April) - this might possibly be the same in your trust and your money might be coming next month? Either way though I'd be checking your contract status with HR/your manager and getting that sorted.... Good luck!

Thanks. That's really helpful. I think the issue is that senior management won't make our contracts permanent.

I'll sit tight and see what happens in April. I think there's a high chance that I'll not get b6 increments.

If I rock the boat too much then I risk losing the acting up role.

I would go directly to HR and ask them to clarify your position; explaining everything.

I am middle management in the NHS. Acting up/secondment positions are temporary and if the post becomes permanent a new recruitment drive will take place where you may or may not be successful. Your manager cannot make an acting up position permanent.

However, there is some policy if an employee has been in a temporary role for 4 years the position may become permanent ... but I don't know an awful lot about this.

Good luck anyway!