(Leader finds an £8K extra allowance for yet another Labour Councillor)
With all the media attention focussed on politicians allowances and expenses, perhaps the last thing you might expect is for a cash strapped council to create a new committee with the primary purpose of giving an extra allowance to one of their councillors. However, on the basis of evidence received, that is just what has happened in Torfaen.
The reply from Torfaen County Borough Council to a freedom of information inquiry indicates strongly that the primary reason for forming the new Policy Co-ordination and Development Committee at the Annual Meeting on the 19th of May was in order to create an additional Chair with an allowance of £8,304 per annum. If the new position had not been created then the leader would have been in the embarrassing position of having to choose just one labour councillor who would be denied an SRA (Special Responsibility Allowance).
FULL REPORT HERE
Conclusion
Accepting that some form of collection of councillors to discuss some sort of issues had been in the leaders mind for some time, and that the MCWP (Members Constitution Working Party) had touched on it, it is clear that the preparation, timing, haste, lack of consultation and short cuts used to present this report at the Annual Meeting were because of the SRA (Special Resposibility Allowance) involved. The willingness of all those 23 councillors who receive an SRA to accept, without question, the recommendations of their leader (and paymaster), is sadly an indication of a much wider problem.
The above extracts from the full report are added here to allow everyone to comment on this subject. Please have a good read of the full report first! We are particularly interested in comments from councillors who voted for the new committee, what did they know beforehand and so on.
Monday 13 July 2009
MAKING ALLOWANCES
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2 comments:
Peter Cathcart, who voted with Labour for the new committee has said "this committee was not the brain child of our council but more or less a directive from the Assembly if you look at welsh reports you'll find that they advised all authorities to form this committee."
I have yet to receive a reply to my request for him to provide references for this claim, and a search on the web shows up nothing on this subject. He is the only councillor to get in contact since our report was published, none of the other members of the three plaid and two independents who support the labour leader have replied to my email.
"They have the right to remain silent but...."
Talking about those five labour supporters, are they aware of the comment on another thread of this blog, from Nutcracker....
"Whilst we are talking about labour's co-conspiritors, they should know of the "utter contempt" they are held in by the labout hierachy.
Thick skinned they must be!!!!"
"My contacts within the labour party - no names no pack drill - tell me that in group meetings they are derided.
Unguarded comments by certain members of the heirachy leave it in no doubt that they are being used."
Perhaps they would care to comment on that?
This morning I went to the second meeting of the Policy Co-ordination and Development Committee. Councillor Niel Mason is paid an SRA (Special Responsibility Allowance) of £8304 per year to chair this committee, in addition to his standard allowance of more than £13,000 per year. The meeting, like the first one, lasted 1 1/2 hours. The meetings will be held monthly, that is a maximum of 11 times a year.
None of the councillors present had prepared for the meeting, nor was there any need for this, as the Agenda, Report and Powerpoint presentation on Residential Parking in Torfaen were excellent. All actions decided on were for the attention of officers, not the councillors present.
The Chairman contributed to the meeting, but no more than any other councillor and I felt that it would have been better chaired by Lynne Williams who was the officer guiding Neil Mason through the meeting.
So for chairing 11 meetings at say 2 hours each (allowing for travel time etc) gives 22 hours per year. £8304 for 22 hours makes the rate of pay £377 per hour.
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