A Labour council has been accused of “greed” after giving its cabinet a 45 per cent pay rise.
Westminster City Council’s six cabinet members will see their yearly allowance rise from £11,733 to £17,008, a rise of 44.96 per cent — ten times the hike that the council’s employees will receive.
The boost comes just ten months after the council switched control from the Conservatives to Labour for the first time in 58 years.
Gosh. So it’s the Tories who always grasp the taxpayers’ money, right?
switched control from the Conservatives to Labour for the first time in 58 years.
Was becoming unelectable part of their plan?
Given Steve’s superb comment about the “Conservative Party”, the electorate obviously lacked the electron microscope required to differentiate between the two parties…
But when was the last rise? In my experience, allowances are reviewed about every five years, and each group fights to implement a lower rise than recommeded by the outside reviewers, which means that allowances get progressively smaller and smaller in real terms, and at each review the outside reviewers recommend a higher increase because the councillors keep masochistically not implementing the review, resulting in the next review recommending an even higher increase.
When I was a councillor the process went sort of:
year 1 review: a standstill increase would be 3.5%
councillors: we can’t do that! we’ll do 1%
year 5 review: because of that 2.5% lag, a standstill increase would be 6.5%
councillors: we can’t do that! we’ll do 1%
year 9 review: because of that 4.5% lag, a standstill increase would be 13%
councillors: we can’t do that! we’ll do 1%
year 9 review: because of that 12% lag, a standstill increase would be 20%
councillors: we can’t do that! we’ll do 1%
repeat ad absurdum.
I’ve done some digging. Wow! Basic pay is £9600. When I was a councillor I was on that TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO! (They now get £12,500, so a 1.2%pa increase) This looks very much like a typical Conservative-controlled council “oo, we don’t need paying, I’m rich I don’t need the money” moronicy. If *YOU* don’t need to be paid, then *YOU* can choose to not be paid, you have no right to force everybody else not to be paid.
From what I can find the allowances have also been frozen “for several years”, so, yes, they have just been building up the problem themselves.
Why are councillors paid a salary at all? Genuine expenses may be defensible.
BiW,
I used to know the deputy chairwoman of our county council reasonably well and the reason is that government has foisted so much responsibility on them and made them personally culpable in some case (unlike MPs and ministers) that it was just about a full time job for her. It really is a lot more than emptying the bins.
As jgh says, some may not need the money but not paying them severely limits talent.
Bloke in North Dorset said:
“not paying them severely limits talent.”
That would be a better argument if the ones we had exhibited any talent.
@ jgh
When my parents were Councillors the allowance was Nil. A lot of councillors were out-of-pocket through having to take unpaid time off work to attend council and committee meetings as well as giving up a lot of their free time to look after the people they were reresenting. The quality of councillors (Labour as well as Conservative) was much higher, just as the quality of blood donated in the UK by unpaid volunteers is higher than the paid-for blood collected in the USA.