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28
Jan 2023
Councillor says ‘morally wrong’ to dispute allowances recommendation
A senior county councillor has said It would be morally wrong for a council’s leadership to dispute the findings of an independent panel recommending how much elected members of a new unitary local authority should be paid.
A full meeting of North Yorkshire County Council next month will decide whether to accept setting annual allowances for the 90 elected members of the new council at £15,500.
However, the figure would be a fall for those dual councillors who currently sit on both the county council and district authorities.
The decision follows the county council’s executive supporting the findings of the five-member panel which concluded the workload of councillors would increase by about 25% in serving the unitary authority compared to the county council, which last year paid councillors a basic allowance of £10,316.
The panel, members of which have no connection to the council, said it had also taken inflation and allowances paid in comparable unitary authorities into account when making the recommendation.
The panel said it recognised the economic challenges being faced within the community and had been guided by and taken into consideration the average pay awards in the public sector of four to five per cent.
The panel’s report states:
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As the total cost of basic allowances paid over the last year to the county’s 319 county and district councillors is about £2m, the panel’s recommendation represents a saving of £636,000.
The issue is often among the most contentious decisions councillors are faced with and Cllr David Chance, executive member for corporate services, called for allowances to be set nationally in future.
Cllr Gareth Dadd, the authority’s deputy leader, told the meeting the panel had made its recommendation after taking evidence from elected members as well as from comparable local authorities across the country.
He said:
Cllr Dadd said elected members would not have to take their full allowances.
He said while people may have a view on how much of an allowance councillors should be given, in approving the panel’s recommendation for consideration by the full council, executive members had to decide whether what was being proposed was “clearly absurd”.
The Thirsk councillor added the panel’s recommendation was “within the realms of reasonableness” and that it would be a dangerous move for the executive effectively to suggest their own pay rates.
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