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Saturday 5th March 2011
The payment of councillors
has been the subject of a great deal of discussion recently and there is a
distinct feeling that they are getting too much. Members of Lincolnshire County
Council obviously do not agree because they are actually planning to give
themselves a hefty increase.
All 77 elected members receive a basic annual allowance of £8,184 with extra
cash for those who serve on the executive and on committees but the authority
has now set aside the sum of £250,000 for an increase which will boost
allowances by 22% to £10,000 a year. This comes at a time of massive budget cuts
of around £57 million for the authority caused by the curb on public spending
with 818 jobs facing the axe and a total of 3,200 staff currently undergoing
consultation about their future.
The increase in allowances will need a majority vote by councillors, due to be
held on May 20th, just five days before redundancy notices are handed to
employees. But the protests are already rumbling because John Sharman, secretary
for the county branch of Unison, told the Lincolnshire Echo (February
21st): “I would have thought that councillors would want to be extremely careful
about the message they give to their employees as well as the people of
Lincolnshire.”
There have also been misgivings about payments to councillors on South
Kesteven District Council, also Conservative controlled, with a complaint about
the amount collected by the leader, Councillor Linda Neal (Bourne West). The 58
elected members get a basic allowance of £4,373.50 plus expenses with cabinet
and committee members receiving more through special responsibility increments.
The list of payments for 2009-10 was published by the Stamford Mercury on
February 11th which showed that the highest sum went to Councillor Neal with
£22,378 while other Bourne members of the council received lesser amounts,
cabinet member John Smith (£14,344), Judy Smith (£5,943), Trevor Holmes
(£5,074), Bob Russell (£4,851) and David Higgs (£4,557). This prompted a letter
from Miss M Sibborn, of Fir Avenue, Bourne, who wrote that she was astonished by
the amount paid to Councillor Neal (February18th).
“She claims a special allowance of more than £14,000”, wrote Miss Sibborn. “Add
to this her other claims and the total adds up to more than my yearly income yet
not only am I required to pay council tax but also income tax. All of this money
comes out of our council tax and government allowances which essentially means
that the council is employed by us. Are we therefore not entitled to see the job
descriptions and why this amount equals in expenses and allowances more than
many people’s income?”
Councillor Neal replied with a spirited defence of her take home pay in a letter
to the newspaper the following week (February 25th) explaining that she put in
more than 50 hours a week for her allowances which worked out at less than the
minimum wage. “The leader’s responsibilities are many and varied”, she wrote,
“and require me to be available at any time and travel significant distances.
There is an immense amount of reading and it is not unusual to be responding to
emails well into the early hours, past 2 am, as there is not time during office
hours. As far as expenses are concerned, they are not a perk but a refund of
travel costs incurred while on official business. To fulfil my role, I had to
buy a small vehicle and as I nearly always travel alone and often in the dark,
it needs to be reliable.”
No one can deny Councillor Neal’s dedication to duty but it does seem
unsatisfactory that she should be working such long hours and many will wonder
what the other 57 members are doing while she is burning the midnight oil, not
to mention the salaried officers, remembering that the authority’s eleven-strong
management team are currently being paid a whopping £843,000 a year between them
which, with their pension entitlements, is 6.25% of the authority’s entire
budget, while the authority employs more than 700 other staff and a small army
of consultants who command exorbitant fees. Do they all clock up 50 hours a week
and work into the early hours?
If there is so much to be done to keep the council ticking over, then many will
ask why Councillor Neal and her colleagues approved a five-month leave of
absence in 2008 for the then chief executive, Duncan Kerr, to enable him cycle
around Europe? There is a moral here because in the event, he was not even
missed, thus proving the old adage that no one is indispensable.
The payment of councillors is comparatively new. Our present council
system dates back to the Local Government Act of 1894 which was championed
through Parliament by the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, thus putting the
administration of our affairs at local level in the hands of councils with
elected members to run them. There have been many changes since, notably the
reorganisation of 1974, and we now have a three tier system at county, district
and parish or town level, each authority with its own elected councillors,
although many belong to two, sometimes even all three, a massive and unwieldy
combination of bureaucratic control in the hands of an army of local members and
salaried officials.
They were originally unpaid, undertaking the work willingly, a role which
produced men of outstanding talent. Most worked tirelessly for the greater good,
such as William Wherry (1841-1915), a local businessman who became a councillor
and county alderman, whose service to the community was activated by the highest
motives and has been unequalled since. He took every opportunity to promote the
welfare of the town and its people, being such a busy man and so dedicated to
serving the community that shortly before he retired from public life because of
ill health, his numerous offices and positions of responsibility numbered almost
100 and he did not receive a penny for any of them.
Councillors were first allowed to charge expenses in 1972 and the system of a
regular allowance was introduced in 1995, mainly to reimburse them for their
time but the effect in many places has been to create a generation of
professional town hall politicians. In the past five years, thousands have seen
their allowances soar, in some cases up to 150%, much to the dismay of central
government.
The local government minister, Grant Shapps, told the Daily Mail
(February 15th) that it was not justifiable for hikes in councillors' allowances
when public sector workers are facing a two year pay freeze. He added: "We’re
all in this together and those who hold public office need to lead by example.
Councillors must remain arms length volunteers. It will be harmful for local
democracy if they become the bank rolled staff of the town hall dependent on the
municipal pay packet."
Many regard the payment of elected councillors as a retrograde step and indeed
those who serve on the town council do not receive anything although there have
been suggestions that they should and so that time may not be far off. Like
Members of Parliament, they know what their allowances and expenses are before
being elected but the evidence is that once in office they try to manipulate the
system to their own advantage. The problem is that this trend may be turning our
local authorities into a gravy train rather than a vehicle for the delivery of
public services with many retired people seeking office as a means of
supplementing their pensions and it can be no coincidence that the majority of
those who fill the council chambers throughout the land are old age pensioners.
In the past, service was of prime importance and that was the reason for
standing but times are changing and because being a councillor takes its toll on
their time and pocket, many good people would be unwilling to seek election
without some form of remuneration for their trouble. What is needed, as in all
things, is moderation, and once the electorate become dissatisfied with what
they are hearing, then they are likely to seek a change and the place for that
is the ballot box at the local elections.
Thought for the week: The total amount of allowances and expenses paid to
the 77 members of Lincolnshire County Council during 2009-10 was in excess of
£1.3 million while the 58 members of South Kesteven District council collected
more than £375,000.
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