We are an LA school and this would constitute a change to your staffing structure and need to be agreed through your governing body. You would need to consider it as a restructure and identify recruitment/redundancy/ringfencing as part of managing the restructure. We have a policy/procedure in place for this

To expand slightly on Kay's answer: no, you don't have to advertise it.

This is a new role, and the exiting role will therefore become redundant. So you ring fence the current job holder and appraise them against the requirements of the new role. If you're satisfied that it's substantially similar, you can just slot them into the role. If it's not substantially similar, you can interview them for the role ahead of any other candidate and, if they satisfy you that they have the necessary skills and experience, you can, again, slot them into the job.

Only if, having taken a full assessment of their skills and abilities, you are satisfied that the current post holder isn't qualified for the role would you be looking to advertise the role.

All that said, it would be worth consulting with the current post holder's union and getting them involved as early as possible. They should have no objections to avoiding redundancy or supporting a member to build on their experience and success into a more senior position.

As far as pay goes, I'm not qualified to answer the question.

In reply to Robey:

Thank you very much Robey, that is very clear.

Just a quick follow up question, the difficulty I have is determining if this is a new role or not, my initial thoughts were it was just an amendment to he current JD, would it be considered a new role due to it being a title and salary change?

In reply to Adeel:

The question, legally-speaking, is whether the new role is "substantially similar". The law is pretty lenient in terms of permitting the employer to decide whether a new role is substantially similar to an old one. Generally, a role isn't considered substantially similar if it carries a significant pay increase (why would you pay someone more for doing the same work?*).

As you describe it, the job isn't merely a new title and a pay rise, but "significantly more work". You need to articulate what that means in real terms and explain it to the employee. Usually a promotion and a pay rise are welcome, but if that comes with an unreasonable task burden, the employee might feel like they would rather be made redundant and complain if you simply present them with the new job as a fait accompli.

*Lots of reasons, I know. But the question needs to be asked and answered to establish whether a role is substantially similar.

In reply to Robey:

Hi Robey, very helpful indeed, gives me a framework to work to. I'm meeting with the LM and Headteacher to discuss it. Thank you once again!

In reply to Robey:

Hi Robey, just thought if I give you an update and I just had a quick question. The LM and headteacher agreed the title of the new post and responsibilities as well as the pay, the LM briefly spoke to the staff member in question and she is keen to move forward with the position and is happy with what is being offered, in this scenario would this be considered a 'consultation' that the LM did with her and we can then simply do a matching exercise, (our Local authority policy says that role that matches more that 65% to the current role the employee is doing, they can be assimilated into the new role automatically) after which she gets a letter confirming her in the new post? or do we have to go through the process of consultation - matching - letter

In reply to Adeel:

Matching can be a formality if employer and employee are in agreement, but it can be helpful to at least have a written record of the process in case of a future dispute of any sort.

Consultation, however, features the legal right to employee representation. If you think something forms a part of a formal consultation, then your employee must be informed of their right to representation and have the opportunity to arrange or decline representation at their discretion. It's arguable that consultation might have taken place without the employee being explicitly offered the opportunity for a representative if there were supporting policies indicating the right and the employee was aware that it was a formal consultation, but good practice would dictate that the employee should be told. If the employee wasn't even told that the discussion represented a formal consultation then there is no argument: it was not a formal consultation.

65% is a nice, low bar. How you go about matching is largely up to you but, by way of example, I've literally just been through this process. We used key phrases from the new job description and looked for evidence of similar work in the old one, marking each point on a scale of 0 (not evidence of a match) to 3 (near perfect evidence of a match). The various sections were weighted depending upon the importance (responsibilities are rather more important than job title, and you can weight salary, too, if there is a substantial mismatch). In my case, because a lot of JDs were quite dated, we held assurance meetings for each role, with the current line manager asserting whether a statement in the new JD was already a current feature of the job even if it didn't appear in the old JD. We found that all but a handful of our existing in-scope people had substantially similar roles to slot into, with the remainder needing to undertake ring-fenced interviews to address areas of mismatch.

Ideally, you would undertake job matching, then have a meeting (formal consultation with representation) in which you present and discuss the job matching and verbally confirm the slot in. Then you'd confirm it afterwards in a letter along with the new JD, any changes to Ts&Cs and a start date.

In reply to Robey:

Absolute legend! Thank you very much it is clear as day now. I have an action in place following your advice.