It’s an old question given new impetus of late: should the allowance of councillors be increased?
As it stands, councillors are compensated through an allowance estimated by the Local Government Association to be around £7,000 per year on average. But the recent Councillors on the Frontline report, produced by the Communities and Local Government cross-part committee, stated that the current level of allowances paid to councillors is too low and acts as a deterrent to many people who might otherwise stand for election. Moves to increase the allowance however run contrary to the thinking of many in Government, including the DCLG itself, which has unequivocally declared that: “Councillors should be volunteers, not the bankrolled staff of the municipal state”.
It’s an issue which throws up strong, passionate arguments on each side. In this guest blog, the first of a two-part series of this issue, Clive Betts MP, Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, puts forward his view. We’ll be publishing the second part next week, but in the meantime we’d love to hear your comments.
“On 10 January, I appeared on the Today programme to debate the findings of my Committee’s report, Councillors on the Frontline, with Grant Shapps, the Conservative Party Chairman. The discussion centred upon councillors’ allowances. My Committee had concluded that councillors, especially those taking time off work, should receive an appropriate level of compensation. Grant rejected this: he insisted that councillors should be volunteers, and went as far as to liken them to scout leaders. I think that this view is wrong and flies in the face of the Government’s expressed commitment to localism. Now more than ever, we need a debate about who councillors are and what role they perform. This debate is not possible without also considering the remuneration they receive.
Let’s remember why the Committee decided to launch the inquiry. It followed the publication of the National Census of Local Authority Councillors for England, which found that the average age of a councillor was now 60; that only 31% of councillors were women; and that 96% were white. Absolute “reflectiveness” would be impossible to achieve, and you don’t need to come from a particular section of society to represent that section effectively. But healthy local democracy depends on people from different backgrounds being able to see people ‘like them’ in their council chambers; this does not happen at the moment. We need to find ways of increasing the numbers of women, younger people and black and minority ethnic people serving on local authorities.
In some areas it is a challenge to find any candidates at all, let only any from under-represented sections of society. If councillors are to be unpaid volunteers, the pool is going to be even smaller. It is clear that remuneration, along with time commitment and the attitude of employers, is one of the key barriers preventing people standing for election. People are put off becoming councillors because the money does not adequately compensate them for the work involved, and in the case of councillors in employment they may lose more from taking time off work than they receive in allowances. As localism, with increased local responsibilities, makes the job more complex and demanding, the workload on a councillor will become greater and the case for appropriate allowances stronger.
We heard two recurrent concerns about the system for determining allowances. First, that councillors are reluctant to vote for an increase in allowances for fear of the negative public and press reaction. Second, that at present, because a large proportion of councillors are retired, they do not have the same need to vote for increase in allowances as employed councillors. A vicious circle follows: allowances are frozen and only those who are retired or some other support come forward to stand for councils. To tackle the problem the Committee recommended that councils have the option to transfer responsibility for setting allowances to independent local bodies; this would be similar to the approach Parliament has taken to MPs’ pay and allowances. Second, we proposed that these bodies (or councils) should have that power to include a capped element to compensate for loss of earnings. All this would be for local determination, not a central requirement.
The Government response to our report is due in March. I hope that Ministers will have looked carefully at our recommendations and decided that, unpopular though they may be, councillors’ allowances are vital if local democracy is to thrive. It is vital for local democracy that the debate is raised beyond the level Grant Shapps seems to want to take it down to.”
councillors in local authorities around the UK. As part of this campaign, we have also launched a new online tool which allows people to search our comprehensive database to see for themselves how much money their local politicians are each given per year in basic allowances.
We have collated the information for every local authority in the UK for both 2010-11 and 2011-12 so that the public can see what their locally elected representatives are paid for the role, which many have viewed historically as a voluntary position.
Click here for a full breakdown of councillors’ allowances by local authority
Click here to use a postcode to look up the basic allowance of your local councillors
Our findings expose considerable disparities between the basic allowance given to councillors not only across the country, but between similar authorities carrying out the same functions in nearby areas.
The councils paying the highest basic allowance to councillors (by type of authority) are:
English County Council – Nottinghamshire – £12,906
English Unitary Authority – Durham – £13,300
English Metropolitan District – Birmingham – £16,267
English Non-Metropolitan District – Bolsover – £9,902
London Borough – Croydon – £11,239
Welsh Council – Seven councils pay £13,868, namely Bridgend, Carmarthenshire, Conwy, Monmouthshire, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Torfaen, and Vale of Glamorgan
Scottish Council – Scottish Borders – £16,932
The councils paying the lowest basic allowance to councillors (by type of authority) are:
English County Council – Northamptonshire – £7,086
English Unitary Authority – Rutland – £3,860
English Metropolitan District – Trafford – £6,352
English Non-Metropolitan District – South Ribble – £1,500
London Borough – Kingston – £7,528
Welsh Council – Cardiff – £11,342
Scottish Council – Clackmannanshire – £16,100.
The five biggest increases in the basic allowance between 2010-11 and 2011-12 were:
Boston Borough Council: £2,378 to £3,052 – a 28 per cent increase
Mid Devon District Council: £3,654 to £4,500 – a 23 per cent increase
Slough Borough Council: £5,973 to £7,100 – a 19 per cent increase
North Hertfordshire District Council: £3,798 to £4,500 – a 18 per cent increase
Tunbridge Wells Borough Council: £4,730 to £5,279 – a 12 per cent increase
The five biggest decreases in the basic allowance between 2010-11 and 2011-12 were:
Tewkesbury Borough Council: £8,850 to £7,200 – a decrease of 19 per cent
Gedling Borough Council: £3,685 to £3,299 – a decrease of 10 per cent
North Lincolnshire Council: £7,638 to £6,874 – a decrease of 10 per cent
Three Rivers District Council: £5,090 to £4,581 – a decrease of 10 per cent
Castle Point Borough Council: £3,550 to £3,195 – a decrease of 10 per cent
Click here for a full breakdown of councillors’ allowances by local authority
Click here to use a postcode to look up the basic allowance of your local councillors
Matthew Sinclair, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:
“With local authorities up and down the country having to rein in spending and many public sector staff facing a pay freeze, those councillors who have awarded themselves an increase in their allowances in defiance of government advice should hang their heads in shame. They cannot retain the moral authority to make tough decisions on council spending if they believe their own allowances should be immune. Many taxpayers will be surprised at how much the amount paid varies from one council to the next. Why do Manchester councillors each need nearly £16,000 per year when their counterparts in neighbouring Trafford happily carry out their duties for barely £6,000? Local people should be able to see how much cash their councillors are taking in allowances and compare the cost with nearby councils. This kind of transparency will allow them to decide for themselves whether they are getting good value for money.”
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/2012/08/taxpayers-alliance-reveals-highest-lowest-paid-councillors-uk.html
Responding to the DCLG Select Committee’s report on councillors’ allowances, Matthew Sinclair, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:
“With local authorities up and down the country having to rein in spending and many public sector staff facing a pay freeze, the last thing anyone should be proposing is a hike in councillors’ allowances.
“No-one thinks that their local authority would be doing a better job if only the councillors were taking more of our cash. The MPs on the DCLG select committee appear to be seeking to create a whole new class of professional politicians, which would be bad news for hard-pressed taxpayers.
“Being a councillor is not a full-time job and there are scores of town halls around the country which function perfectly well with councillors taking modest allowances.
“It would also be wrong to take the power away from councillors over the setting of their allowances. They should continue to set the rate and allow voters to hold them to account at the ballot box for that among the many other decisions they take. Otherwise, the power gets handed to some unelected quango which the public is unable to hold to account at all.”
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/2013/01/tpa-slams-dclg-select-committee-plan-hike-councillors-allowances.html
In the ideal world, I’d like to see payment by results… but I guess that raises too many other questions! Practically, councillors should be volunteers. They should get genuine expenses that compensate them for out of pocket expenses (bus fares and hire of meeting rooms etc) and an allowance equivalent to a living wage to compensate them for time spent on council business – which they should record on a timesheet. In Birmingham, they receive something like £15k each as a baseline allowance and whilst for some this probably reflects or under-estimates expenses, others treat it as the equivalent of earnings. It means that some are in local politics to earn money and they follow the party line in order to maintain their employment.
If you formalise this and started paying councillors a wage it would drive a further wedge between them and the communities they serve.
What this report has not taken into consideration is the expenses Councillors get. Some don’t claim but many others claim expenses which counts as renunermation and many have failed to pay tax and NIC’s. Councillors cannot have it always many don’t even attend council meetings or indeed only on rare occasions. My Local County Council’s Leadership and Cabinet milk every part of claiming expenses and it is very difficult under the FOIA to get any accountability for the money they spend on themselves. So, what to you expect from the people when they are constantly lied to.Unless you have the nerve to challenge and to seek the documentation within our rights as the public to do so then they get away with murder. To be frank I am totally sick of Local Government and the never ending of the opening of the public purse to pay for expenses – give them a salary to cover their costs including mileage and treat them the same as a “business”.
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