Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Leader’s bid for 15% rise in allowances ‘reflects badly’
‘I think in Mr Carter we have got basically got someone who does what he wants. This episode reflects very badly on the council’
County council leader Paul Carter’s efforts to influence an independent panel’s deliberations over councillors’ allowances have been strongly criticised by a local member.
It was revealed this week that the Tory leader, who commands a huge majority at County Hall, made a lastditch attempt to the panel to get it to agree to a 15% increase.
His pleas were ignored and a 1.5% rise was recommended. The council controversially went ahead with the 15% suggested by Cllr Carter.
Canterbury Lib Dem county councillor Ida Linfield was among 13 councillors who voted against the increase in July.
She believes the tactics employed by Mr Carter have damaged the authority.
She said: “Why employ an independent panel to carry out this review and then completely ignore its advice?
“The panel did this work impeccably and spoke to a number of councillors and measured allowances against various benchmarks.
“I think in Mr Carter we have got basically got someone who does what he wants. This episode reflects very badly on the council as a whole.”
Emails between Cllr Carter and the committee show that he called for it to fall into line with him so that the authority could present a more united front when considering the allowance increase.
He said it would “be regrettable if the county council could not endorse the panel’s recommendations”. The increase ultimately raised Mr Carter’s personal remuneration by more than £6,000 a year, taking his annual allowance to £48,425.
Details of the correspondence between Cllr Carter and the threeperson panel were released to the KM Group under the Freedom of Information Act.
The exchange of emails reveal that the appeal was given short shrift by the panel which disputed the claims he made about KCC falling behind other local authorities.
In his email, Cllr Carter said the panel had previously taken into account the rate of inflation, notably when it proposed an 8% increase for the period of 2009-2013.
“We can see no good reason why the principles that were applied by the... panel in 2009 should not be applied again,” he said.
The new information provided “clearly shows that Kent, as the largest local authority in the country now lags behind many other local government authorities and indeed lags behind substantially other public sector remuneration allocation.”
He wrote that following a “very full and comprehensive discussion with colleagues... the significant majority concluding that a 15% increase from 2009 levels should be applied”.
The panel said: “As we have stated, over the period 2001-17, allowances have in fact increased by 191% for the basic allowance and well in excess of 60% for the leader’s special responsibility allowance.”
The 15% rise which was subsequently voted through means the basic allowance is worth an extra £1,920 – the rate rising to £14,725 for all county councillors. The leader’s pay rate will rise to £48,425.
Once other increases are taken into account, the council will have to find an additional £244,000 to absorb the extra costs.