FEATURE INSIGHT
My first time
Mike Nicholas, editor, outlines his first participation in a payroll software implementation project, and recalls twomemorable events
L ooking back, I realise my first time was an amazing experience. I begin my account in 1967 when age 16 I started working in the Centralised Payroll Office (CPO) of the Chief Accountant’s Department, Southern Region, British Rail. The CPO was reached via steps and a pathway leading from a gate on platform 8 at Brighton station. The path meandered through the vast goods, carriage and wagon maintenance yard to the east of the station. (This yard has since been demolished and replaced by homes and businesses; and it’s also where the office of The Pensions Regulator is located.) The CPO was in a very large and high-ceilinged shed, which at one time had a track line running into it. In 1968 the CPO relocated to offices
in North Street, Brighton (adjacent to the Royal Pavilion gardens), which had been vacated when the Alliance Building Society moved its head office to purpose-built premises in the neighbouring borough of Hove. I worked on a section of fourteen dealing with the pay of 500 or so train drivers of the central division of the southern region. Much of the work was manual but there was some mechanisation of P11 deduction working sheets and payslip and P14/P60 production (if my memory does not fail me). I recall writing (and rewriting) P14/ P60 carbonised sets as late as August annually. In 1968, I transferred to the payroll section of the Traffic Manager’s
Department, East Croydon, manually calculating wages for staff in the offices there plus relief staff. Manually casting and balancing large sheets of columns of amounts all in £sd (pre-decimal) is a great challenging experience: 12 pennies to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound. (Adding machines were scarce, so my colleagues and I relied mainly on mental arithmetic.) In the early 1970s I returned to the CPO office, which had been renamed as the Data Input Centre (DIC) of the Chief Finance Officer’s Department. In due course, payroll processing for all staff working in the central division of the southern region, plus head office staff, would have their pay processed from this office. There were also DICs located in Southampton and Beckenham for the west and east divisions of the region respectively. The payroll sections in DIC Brighton were located on the fourth floor, with the data recording and verifying (R&V) section
...the age of the mainframe computer housed in special buildings and environments
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | April 2019 | Issue 49 42
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