Councillors vote down increase in allowances
CORNWALL councillors have agreed to freeze their allowances after rejecting an independent panel’s recommendation to increase them.
In a debate which was heated at times, councillors took more than two-and-a-half hours and five separate votes to decide to keep their allowances at the current rate.
It means that the council’s basic allowance for elected members will remain at £14,472.48. Combined with the reduction of councillors from 123 to 87 after May’s elections the decision will save the council £535,338 a year.
The council’s independent remuneration panel had recommended that the basic allowance should increase to £15,596.99.
Panel members explained that this had been calculated by looking at evidence gathered including councillor surveys and benchmarking against other councils in the South West.
The first vote of the meeting was on a proposal from Cllr Dulcie Tudor, and seconded by Colin Martin, to make a 25% reduction in the allowance voluntary.
This would have increased the basic allowance to £20,102.65. Both councillors said this would be a key way to ensure more people from different backgrounds could stand for election.
They highlighted that many councillors considered the role to be full time and therefore an allowance was required to provide sufficient payment.
Labour councillor Jayne Kirkham highlighted that the current council has 30 women out of 123 councillors, just 24%. She also highlighted that 41 councillors are aged over 70 – 33%.
She said: “That doesn’t seem particularly representative of the population of Cornwall or diverse.”
However the motion was heavily voted down with just three votes in favour, 94 against and 11 abstentions.
A second motion from Paul Wills and Jim McKenna recommended that the council keep the allowances at the current rate and defer any decision on a review for the next council once elected. Cllr Wills said that at a time when people were losing their jobs and the use of food banks was increasing it was not appropriate for councillors to be considering an increase in allowances. He said: “We are, at the moment, living in unprecedented times in a national and global crisis. Now is not the time for us as a council to be considering our remuneration.”
However Cllr Wills’ proposal was also substantially thrown out with just four votes in favour, 104 against and three abstentions.
A third vote was then taken on the original recommendation from the independent remuneration panel to increase the allowances to £15,596.99. But this was also rejected with 34 votes in favour, 76 against and three abstentions.
Linda Taylor, Conservative group leader at County Hall, said that her group would not support any increase. She said it would be “unjust” for councillors to consider increasing their allowances at this time.
A final proposal was put to councillors for the allowances to remain at their current rate and to rise in line with any pay increases awarded to council staff. This was agreed with 86 in favour, nine against and 10 councillors abstaining.