Thanks for your replies (again!).

When the salary question came up at interview, I did try to dodge it first by saying "I expect to be paid within the normal salary range for this position - could you tell me what the range is?" to which they replied they did not yet have a salary range for this position because it was a new post.

It also appeared at interview that I will have some freedom to define the role myself. On the phone today, it transpired that one of the first tasks will be for me and my line manager to write my job description, basically!

I spoke to them today and when I tried to negotiate, they said that salary was non-negotiable. Should I have argued against that? It seems a bit rude not to believe them and I thought it would annoy them if I still tried to negotiate after they had clearly said "no".

I asked for some further details about other things, so they sent me the details but accidentally also sent the email string where they were discussing what salary to offer me! It appeared that they really did not know the salary range at interview but that they had undertaken some market intelligence or something to get the standard range.

I did think that they were still underpaying me, although this is a large step up for me, so maybe I should be a bit lower. I am thinking that the HR person may well be telling the truth (they have not actually lied to me ever, as far as I can see) in saying that the salary was not negotiable and so I could get round it by asking HR to negotiate for me. If it turns out this isn't possible, I haven't lost.

kfc.