16.5% increase to WBC councillor basic allowance Options

[Simon Kirby]

This article says that a recommendation to increase the WBC councillor allowance by 16.5% is to be voted on next week.

The current basic allowance is £6,285 and the proposal is to increase that to £7,324, with an additional cost to the tax-payer of £54k. That's offset a little by the abolition of a £200 broadband allowance and a £200 IT consumables allowance, but as only one in four councillors claim that it's not a big saving.

That does seem to be an excessively generous increase for a job that, in my view, should be done without reward for the public benefit. I accept that an allowance to cover necessary expenses is appropriate, but at a guess I'd have thought a tenth of that allowance was adequate.

[Sherlock]

Well the good news is that, when (as per WBC's draft strategic plan) many services are handed over to volunteers/community organisations, outsourced to Capita and the like or to not-for-profits (like BBOWT managing Greenham Common), or simply cut. there just won't be the need for so many councillors. The government will also strongly encourage more schools to become academies (or, as of today's announcement, force them to do so in the case of failing schools), further reducing the load on our hard working representatives.

We can be confident that when WBC announces its new strategic plan it will include a large reduction in the number of councillors which will offset this huge increase in allowances. An administration whose overriding aims are to slash costs, reduce the role of the state, and to hollow-out local government, could hardly do otherwise.