Employee benefits
Central Bedfordshire Council offers more than just competitive salaries and benefit packages.
As an organisation we provide quality training and development programmes; performance evaluation processes and challenging opportunities creating a firm foundation to develop and reward our people.
What can we offer you?
From the moment you join our organisation we want your experience to be positive. We are committed to providing every new employee with a clear and planned induction programme at both an organisation and department level. We have a new and highly praised corporate induction day which we run every three months. Each Manager ensures that a new employee has a thorough induction programme tailored to their needs and incorporating meeting with relevant colleagues and stakeholders.
Pensions
You will be invited to join the Local Government Pension Scheme and can remain in the Scheme up to two days before your 65th birthday. The scheme is a final average salary scheme. Contributions are dependent on salary band, commencing at 5.5% and increasing to 7.5% dependent on salary. If you are new to Local Government, but have paid into a pension scheme elsewhere, it may be possible to transfer the benefits to the Local Government Scheme.
Work life balance and well-being
We offer a raft of arrangements to ensure that all our employees can achieve a healthy balance between their work and personal lives. To make this work these are just some of the standard benefits provided:-
Annual Leave
Annual leave entitlement is based on the length of your continuous service in local government as at 1st April:
| up to 5 years’ continuous service | 24 days |
| Completion of 5 years’ continuous service | 29 days |
| Completion of 10 years’ continuous service | 31 days |
| (For ex-manual employees, this entitlement includes two fixed extra-statutory days to be taken at the spring and summer bank holidays.) | |
Hours of work
Starting and finishing times will depend on where you work. Flexible working hours may be available depending on the needs of the service. This can enable employees to maintain a work life balance and gain control over their working routine. Home working can be an employment option in some areas offering those employees greater flexibility. Other provisions include job sharing and part-time and term-time only working.
Healthcare and Support
The health of our employees is very important to us. Our Occupational Health Service offers rapid and easily accessible support including medical referrals, health screening, counselling, work place assessments, specialised health checks and health promotions.
Employee discounts and other benefits
We provide a range of benefits including childcare vouchers, discounted rates at local nurseries, a cycle loan scheme and a car loan scheme which provides loans to approved staff who need a car to carry out their official duties. We also offer discounts at local leisure facilities and have recently signed up with a partner enabling us to offer discounts on UK hotels, theme parks, mortgages, car breakdown cover and a whole lot more. Together our unique benefits and rewards package enable us to meet our aim of increasing employee satisfaction and to retain talented individuals within our organisation.
Affordable Housing
HomeBuy offers a range of low cost home ownership and discounted market rent products developed to make home ownership more affordable and help people get a foot on the property ladder. Orbit HomeBuy Agents provide a one stop shop service to people interested in any of the HomeBuy products within Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. Please click here for more information and details of how to apply
Latest information from Orbit Homebuy
The service is available to households with a household income of less than £60,000 per annum who have a housing need.
Further information on who is eligible and how to apply for affordable housing (application/pdf; 428kB)
