Darlington Borough Council believes uncertainty over salary levels due to the council's ongoing job evaluation programme is having a detrimental effect on the take-up of its salary sacrifice benefits.

The council is currently conducting job evaluations in line with the 2004/05 single-status pay agreement which is designed to standardise the pay of manual and non-manual local authority workers.

Ian Wilson, head of performance and development, is worried about the effect on its home computing schemes. "If your pay goes down and you have salary sacrifice on top of that it will exacerbate the situation, although our intention is to keep doing the scheme," he said.

Some 8% of 3,300 eligible employees have so far opted for a computer on salary sacrifice terms.

The council has just contracted Dixons Group Business Services to provide PCs in addition to an existing deal with Evesham Technology.