Knight weighs pay

The former senior partner of City firm Simmons & Simmons is overseeing an investigation into how London's workers should be compensated for the higher cost of living, and has suggested that solicitors at the lower end of the pay scale may benefit from the exercise.Bill Knight, who retired from Simmons last August, this week stepped in to chair the London Assembly's London weighting advisory panel, which will conduct the first review of the issue for 28 years.He was asked to head the review after a client recommended him.The panel will consider how to balance more expensive property prices, travel and consumer costs, and will report in June.Mr Knight said one of the panel's aims is to standardise the way employers currently compensate workers for living in London.'In 1974 the pay board established levels of London weighting, but the subject has never been looked at in a rational way since then,' he explained.'Some companies do give London weighting, while others address the problem in other ways like providing recruitment and retention allowances.

We now want to analyse the statistics across a range of jobs and set a London premium.'Mr Knight added that the investigation will focus mainly on public sector workers, and doubted that City lawyers would be concerned about London weighting.

However, he suggested the information gained by the panel might be of interest to less well paid solicitors.

'Legal aid lawyers could look at a column of what managers, for example, are getting and say, "See, the weighting for them is so much, and we aren't getting that", 'he said.

Paula Rohan