West Berkshire councillors vote to increase allowance: Are they worth it?
Councillors in West Berkshire have awarded themselves a 5.9 per cent rise in allowances.
The figure translates to a £479 uplift on the basic allowance and the total paid to councillors is a cost of £500,000 in the council’s beleaguered finances.
But the rationale to give the locally-elected officials in West Berkshire a lift at a time of financial constraints on the council was that allowances need to be there to attract different people into local politics.
“We need people who are younger, fresher, not as wizened as some of us,” said council leader Jeff Brooks. “If we are to attract people who have a career and we are asking them to give up evenings it is reasonable they get recompense for that. Do we want to end up with people like me?”
While his rhetorical question raised a smirk at last week’s full council meeting, he was also on point to focus on the mostly male, pale and stale-ness of the council chamber not being entirely representative of the West Berkshire population.
As they debated the rise in allowances, Green councillor Carolyne Culver said: “It is an opportunity to reflect on what we do as councillors.”
So let’s reflect.
To be fair to the 43 local politicians, they haven’t had a raise since 2020, and the independent panel set up to make the recommendations noted they were the second worst paid of the six authorities in Berkshire.
Bracknell Forest was top; Wokingham was bottom. If you are a councillor in Southampton, you get nearly £14,000 in allowances.
That panel also concluded that an hourly rate of £19.16 should be paid (this is a reduced public service rate – which basically knocks 45 per cent off the hourly rate they might get if they were ‘paid’ for an average role in West Berkshire’s private sector).
The Public Service Principle is the principle that an important part of being a councillor is the desire to serve the public and therefore, not all of what a councillor does should be remunerated. Part of a councillor’s time should be given voluntarily.
But another aside, again from Ms Culver, that perhaps one day councillors should be paid a living wage might be the way to attract the skills and talent needed to decide how to spend, in the case of West Berkshire anyway, £170m a year.
Councillors must juggle the needs of their communities within budgetary restraints – and that of the party line in many cases.
And to do that, they must spend time figuring out the issues, as well as being the conduit from the people to the politics.
“Case work has increased, partly due to lack of resources,” said Ms Culver. “People will come to us for all manner of issues. It might be that people are unhappy with the council or that their heating isn’t working. If people come to you you can’t say sorry, it is not my working hours. You are there 24/7 for the people that need you.
"We also support parish councils, community groups, cafés etc. We also have to prepare for a lot of meetings, to read the detail and research the issues. We have to become experts in a lot of issues.”
The council chamber does have people with professional backgrounds in, for example, finance, HR and marketing, so it isn’t entirely a retirees club.
But it takes time and commitment – as well as a thick skin to enter the election poll fray to get a seat in the first place.
The standard councillor with no special responsibility works around 16 hours a week.
More senior ones up to 30 hours a week – which notches up to becoming a full-time job.
“Many councillors give up paid work to take on this role,” one councillor told the awards panel. “It also often replaces other volunteering work we do. This then becomes a bar to younger people who cannot afford to give up paid employment time.”
Hence the argument for a living wage for councillors.
In determining the allowance level, the independent panel reflected on the overall need to ensure that the scheme of allowances was neither an incentive nor a barrier to service as a councillor in West Berkshire.
The panel noted that, in order to attract candidates from more diverse backgrounds, the basic allowance should be set at a level to mitigate some of the factors that may dissuade some people from standing for election.
The council leader gets a special responsibility allowance, on top of the basic allowance, of £21,920; the deputy leader £13,152; the executive members receive £10,960; and the leader of the opposition gets £8,768.
It seems a meagre amount – certainly compared to the wages of MPs. The basic annual salary of a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons is £91,346, plus expenses. In addition, MPs are able to claim allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, and maintaining a constituency residence or a residence in London.
Lee Dillon, Newbury’s newest Lib Dem MP is still a councillor, and is therefore also entitled to the basic allowance.
Local government plays a key role in any democratic system, offering the “most accessible layer of institutionalised democracy” according to the Institute for Government.
Despite having been considerably weakened over successive decades, it has taken on many new frontline roles and has become much more prominent in people’s lives, especially where central government is perceived to have failed.
It provides for an additional layer of democracy to central government and ensures political representation at a local level.
It is publicly accountable for local decisions and the implementation of national ones.
It is responsible for providing a variety of public services, such as social care, education, housing and planning, swimming pools and waste collection.
Successive funding cuts have drained regional politics of its prestige and capacity to make a real impact in vital areas, yet councillors must navigate this, and decide courses of action based on data and expertise provided by the authority’s officers.
The Institute for Government has reported that local administration in England had been “hollowed out” since 2010, and is forced increasingly to limit itself to the provision of statutory services.
With so many local councillors feeling powerless to serve their constituents’ needs, a simple way to encourage and support them is to give them a decent allowance.
Democratically and fairly elected local leaders are more knowledgeable of and responsive to the interests of the communities they serve at the local level, and can act as a conduit between localities and the national level.
“Councils are at the heart of their local areas,” said the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2020. “As place leaders and with a democratic mandate, they are the only agency which can bring together local people and ensure that everyone has access to the public services which communities need to thrive.”
A June 2020 survey by the LGA found that councils “have never been more trusted by their residents to make decisions for them”.
Seventy-three per cent of respondents to the LGA survey said they most trusted their local council to make decisions about how services are provided in their local area, while only 18 percent most trusted the Government.
Further, 71 per cent of respondents “singled out local councillors, as opposed to members of parliament (14 per cent) and Government minsters (eight per cent), as the individuals they most trust to make decisions about how services are provided”.
So all things considered. Perhaps an extra £479 is fair enough.