COUNCILLORS refused to back calls to give themselves a pay increase, saying it would be ‘fundamentally wrong’ given the economic downturn.A Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council committee last night declined to support an independent report which proposed a 2.4 per cent increase on the ‘basic allowance’ to £7,872 a year.
Yet the final decision rests with all members of the authority. And the committee supported new payments for some councillors worth £6,000 to £7,000.
The independent report said it understood the council was strapped for cash but ‘recognises the value of the work councillors do’ and higher pay in other metropolitan councils.
Yet Liberal Democrat Councillor Ian Hedley, right, proposed the Governance Committee reject this as council staff were getting no increase from April.
A councillors’ increase would also have to have been met from keeping staff jobs empty and lowering some workers’ pay, the meeting heard.
He said: “In the next 10 years we are probably going to see a reduction in government grant, cuts in services and less money to spend.”
Cllr Hedley said: “Bear in mind the vast majority of our staff, officers who are going to be working their socks off are going to get nothing, it is fundamentally wrong for us councillors to have an increase.”
And he said: “I have always felt it is fundamentally wrong that we vote our own pay.”
Yet Councillor David Bell said: “The basic allowance remains amongst the lowest in the country.”
While he said he accepted what Cllr Hedley was saying, the rise would go ‘some way towards bridging the gap’. “The back benchers are doing more, I think,” he said.
An increase in the basic allowance would have cost £6,000 to £7,000.
Cllr Hedley said the authority was different to others in the region as it relies more on the council tax rather than Government grants, which he said are low.
Yet the committee supported new charges, which will have to be agreed by full council.
It backed the independent panel’s call for a new £2,304 allowance for the chairman of the licensing committee and £250 a year for co-opted independents members of the standards committee.
And it backed a new payment of £768 a year for spokespersons in groups with five to nine members.
A payment of £1,536 was previously proposed for groups with at least ten. This would have disadvantaged the Labour group, which has five members.
Read the full papers considered at the meeting here.
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