Sounds expensive...

News reaches me that Town Councillors might be going to vote themselves expenses or allowances.

Cllr Sanders (the new Mayor) has regularly complained about not getting reimbursed for all of the letters and phone calls she makes whilst cajoling the landlords down at Morley Bottoms. The previous Finance committees have always knocked it back however, on point of principle. The reason for this is that Parish Councillors are not allowed by law to claim expenses for anything undertaken within the Parish. (They can, however, claim for items outside the boundary, e.g. for travelling to a training day in Leeds). Councillors are at liberty to make phone calls from the Town Council Office, or take post there to be franked.

It is now possible, however, to get an independent renumeration panel to set allowable sums. This comes at a cost, of course. The cost of paying it to all the Councillors (regardless of participation) and the cost of administering the scheme. Already there are rumours of a new Admin Assistant as the Real Admin assistant is covering for the Town Clerk who is on long term sick leave.

The biggest cost will be in the pockets of those who pay Morley Town Council precept. It doesn't sound to me as though there is much cutting of cloth to suit the means, 2006/7 is already a deficit budget drawing on reserves.

I have a softcopy of the previous position of the Finance and General Purposes Committee on Councillor expenses:

• Morley Town Council commenced in May 2000. At that time, it was understood that elected members of town and parish councils are unpaid, as the bodies are the first tier of local government.

• Councillors could claim for mileage and subsistence expenses if performing an approved duty outside the council boundaries (conferences etc.) No allowances were paid for attendance at meetings, committees or any other approved duty within the town council area.

• New regulations came into force on 1st May 2003. These allow for a basic allowance to be paid to members of a town council. This allowance is separate from the travel and subsistence expenses referred to above.

• The basic allowance is calculated to cover the expenses which are associated with the basic duties of being a local councillor.

• The basic allowance is set by a parish remuneration panel. Such a body must be set up by the responsible body, in our case this would be Leeds City Council.
The panel could only be established if requested to do so by a town or parish council.

• The cost of setting up a remuneration panel would be £900 approx. This cost would be met by the councils requesting it (i.e. one council would pay the full cost, nine councils would pay £100 each etc.)

To date, and to the best of my knowledge, such a panel has not been requested by any of the local councils within the Leeds Metropolitan District.

• The new rules were published by the National Association of Local Councils as Legal Topic Note 24. These were considered by Morley Town Council’s Finance & General Purposes Committee at our meeting held on 13th November 2003.

• At that meeting it was proposed that the existing payments for travel and subsistence be maintained, and we would also ask that a dependent carers allowance be considered for members having caring responsibilities. It was agreed that this would be put forward to the Independent Remuneration Panel as part of a joint submission by the Yorkshire Local Council Association.

• We did not support the payment of a basic allowance to members of Morley Town Council.

• These resolutions were approved at the full meeting of Morley Town Council held on 17th December 2003.

• The regulations (The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances)(England) 2003) do not make provision for the payment of personal expenses incurred by individual elected members.

• It must be emphasied that the allowances as detailed apply only to approved duties, i.e. activities that the Council has asked a councillor to undertake.

My position on this is simple. If you want an allowance to be a Councillor, stand for Leeds City Council. Morley Town Council does not have any real responsibility or authority and most of the money (which comes entirely from Morleians) goes on admin & double taxation. If MTC ever gets any truly devolved responsibilities (and the funding to go with it) then there may be a case. Otherwise One Million Pounds (and counting) is not good value for a talking shop and civic pride programme.

(You can see an example renumeration panel assessment here, .pdf file)