STAFF at Gwent Police have won the right to appeal against salaries awarded after a job evaluation.

The Gwent Police branch of Unison has been fighting for the right of appeal since the results came out on April 30.

The Pilat Job Evaluation involved members of police staff - not police officers - answering questions on a computer about their post.

Following the evaluation each post was given points by the computer before the force applied the scores to salary gradings.

Branch secretary Linda Sweet said members were not happy when they were informed of their salary alone in a letter. "The points and how the points were put into money, were not released to individuals or to us," she said.

"We had no knowledge they were going to do that, so we wrote to the force and said we were not in agreement with their statement that there was no right of appeal.

"Some people have been waiting four years for an evaluation and can see that their job has changed in that time, so even if their salary stayed the same it was not good enough for them.

"People felt aggrieved because they hadn't been allowed to see the results and didn't know if they were one point away from a higher salary or 100 points away."

Unison met the force on June 5 and the force agreed, in principle, to: consult with Unison on a jointly agreed job evaluations appeals procedure for future applications;

and to review any recently published job evaluation results at the request of the post-holder.

Mrs Sweet said the appeals procedure and the review process would be the subject of consultation and ratification with the PSMB (Policy and Stra-tegic Management Board). "The completed documents are likely to go to the PSMB in August and after that people should be able to appeal," she said.

"The force is very accomodating of Unison, they will sit around the negotiating table with us and the door to ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) is always open to us." A spokesman for Gwent Police said it was an internal matter.